Black Wings Passed Over
by WarlordFil
Summary: Origin story of Richard S. Wagner. An Illuminati assassin comes face-to-face with a horror so overwhelming that it forces him to question everything he believes in. Rated "M" for themes of the Holocaust. Complete.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: THIS IS A STORY ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST. It is, by nature,  
disturbing. I have attempted to treat the Holocaust in a sensitive and  
respectful way; however, some persons may prefer not to read this story. Due to violence, strong language, and sensitive subject matter, reader discretion is advised.

I have also heard it theorized that non-Jewish people should not write about the Holocaust because they are appropriating someone else's story. I feel that writing is an act of learning to think from, and see from, others' points of view, and if we are not permitted to write about characters who are different from us – who are other genders, races, religions, ages, etc – we face obstacles to empathy and understanding. If this explanation does not satisfy you, perhaps my bloodline will. I was not raised Jewish, but I had Jewish ancestors on one side of my family.

I consider this story to be the "origin tale" of the Wagner character.

This story is set five years before Wagner encountered the Manhattan Clan.

"A German Requiem" was written by James Fenton. All characters, with the exception of Russian ace Lily Litvak, are fictional. Unfortunately, a skinhead gang calling itself the NLR, Nazi Low Riders, is not. Thanks to Mer for information on Mercedes staff cars, and to Dylan Blacquiere for taking me to the art gallery in Charlottetown, going through the Holocaust exhibit and asking, albeit innocently, what Wagner would think of it.

**BLACK WINGS PASSED OVER **

**Chapter the First**

How comforting it is, once or twice a year,  
To get together and forget the old times.

--James Fenton, "A German Requiem"

AUGUST 1992 ARIZONA WAR MUSEUM

Richard S. Wagner swung the museum door wide and began his nightly  
shift. The building was quiet as usual, the previous guard having been in  
the process of getting into his car just as Wagner turned in the driveway.  
The humanlike gargoyle had raised a hand in greeting as the man drove past,  
leaving Wagner's black 1942 Mercedes staff car as the only vehicle in the  
War Museum's parking lot.

He didn't often drive that automobile around on regular business.  
He had a modern vehicle which was also a black Mercedes, but considerably  
less conspicuous than the WWII staff car. However, tonight was a night for  
remembrance, and besides, he worked at a war museum. Those who knew he had  
it thought that the car was a restoration piece he worked on as a hobby.  
They had no idea he'd owned it for fifty-six years. In the deserted parking  
lot, there was no one to ask questions.

Tonight the place was his, which was just the way he liked it.  
Wagner took off his black leather jacket and left it in the car. He  
unfolded his wings, shutting his eyes and enjoying the sensation of  
stretching them wide. It was a luxury he could not afford in the company of  
humans, and it felt so good! Finally, when they started to ache, he relaxed  
them and let his five-fingered wing hands grip the epaulettes of the black  
uniform tunic he wore. His wings hung in loose folds behind, and the golden  
gauntlets on his wing hands looked like clips pinning a cape to his  
epaulettes.

First things first. He signed in and began a once-over check of the  
museum. Medieval Conflict, The Battles of Napoleon, The Civil War, and the  
Great War Gallery were secure and in order. Wagner took a quick sweep past  
The Gulf War, America's Modern Fighting Forces and the Vietnam Memorial  
Hall, shrugging off the discomfort he always felt at being reminded of  
Vietnam, before heading for the place where he intended to spend most of the  
night...the Second World War Wing, which was the first door on the right  
from the entrance hall.

There it was. The uniforms, maps and equipment were like old  
friends to him, and it was because of them that he had applied for the job  
of night watchman here at the War Museum. He could have been a researcher  
or writer if he had wanted to, but this was the job that appealed to him.  
Wagner admitted that the natural gargoyle drive to protect was still strong  
in him, but the true reason for his choice of profession was that here,  
surrounded by memorabilia of the greatest conflict known to mankind, he felt  
at home.

He needed that feeling tonight. For over a year now he'd been lying  
low, leading an almost normal life except for the fact that he couldn't go  
out and about by daylight. Most people would have described his current  
situation as boringly ordinary, but to Wagner, it was a blessed release from  
the life of a special operative for the Illuminati. In the last months, he  
had rarely even thought about the Society, except to wonder when they'd  
contact him with a job and ruin his comfortable new lifestyle.

That question had been answered yesterday night. The Illuminati  
wanted to send him to some place whose name he couldn't even remember, to do  
a job he'd yet to be told about, aside from the fact that it would be a  
long-term undercover assignment rather than an in-and-out assassination.  
Something about a civil war there. He'd assumed it was one of the breakaway  
Russian republics, whose names he'd never bothered to memorize. In fact,  
he'd rather hoped it was, since the reason he'd been off duty in Arizona was  
to allow the furor in Russia to die down. He'd spent 1991 making hits on  
certain Russian politicians the Illuminati had wanted eliminated. If it was  
a breakaway republic, he'd have a brilliant excuse not to go there.

Later tonight, he'd work on his defence. Now, though, he wanted to  
put the entire issue out of his mind. The past was a wonderful place to  
escape from the present, or the future.

He walked down the gallery with a bit of his old fighter-pilot  
swagger, his wings swinging behind him. His eyes scanned every exhibit,  
allowing the familiarity to comfort him. Then, at the end of the hall, he  
noticed that in the the week he'd had off, something new had been set up.

HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL.

Wagner frowned. That was something he didn't want to look at.  
Reminiscing was much more enjoyable when one employed selective memory. He  
prepared to turn and head back to the other side of the gallery when a line  
on a plaque caught his eye.

_It is not your memories which haunt you. _

~But of course it is,~ he thought, with an internal glance backward  
to his days as a captain in the Luftwaffe...or as a gunman with the IRA...or  
as a commando and secret traitor in Vietnam, all under the directives of the  
Illuminati. Curious, and against his better judgement, he read on.

_It is not what you have written down.  
It is what you have forgotten, what you must forget.  
What you must go on forgetting all your life.  
And with any luck oblivion should discover a ritual.  
_  
Wagner noted that the lines belonged to a poem by James Fenton,  
called "A German Requiem." It was an elegy for the German Jews killed in  
the Holocaust, and it was mounted on the wall beside a message introducing  
the visitor to the Holocaust exhibit and a warning of the graphic nature of  
some of the contents.

_What you have forgotten..._

Wagner looked down at the medal around his neck, the black Teutonic  
cross which in English was called the Knight's Cross, and the devices of oak  
leaves and swords which covered the loop that held it to its ribbon,  
indicating subsequent awardings. He had worn it on every mission he could,  
and it had been a comfort before. Now it felt like a weight around his  
neck. The swastika in the center of the medal gave off a dull shine. He  
smirked--it was his cross to carry.

_ What you must forget..._

There was something nagging in the back of his brain, something he  
struggled to repress because, while he wasn't quite sure what it was, he was  
certain that it was something he did not want to think about. He spun on  
his heel and came face-to-face with a life-size image of the gateway to  
Auschwitz.

_What you must go on forgetting all your life._

POLAND DECEMBER 1943

He was an assassin, not a mailman.

Wagner grumbled as he swung the steering wheel of his black Mercedes  
staff car to the left to navigate a turn in the rough Polish road. What a  
job to wake up to. He'd rather be back with the squadron, flying missions  
on the Eastern Front. He half-smiled to himself as he realized he was  
likely the only person who would ever say that. Of course, he didn't feel  
the biting cold nearly as much as his human comrades, and there was still  
food to be found in the woods and fields of Russia--as long as one didn't  
mind eating the local wildlife raw or half-frozen. Humans and their odd  
conventions.

He also had better odds of survival than did the human members of  
the Luftwaffe. His night vision was far superior, enabling him to spot  
Russian fighters long before their pilots knew he was there. It was only  
one of the many benefits of belonging to a nocturnal species. Another  
benefit, this one uniquely gargoyle, was the automatic healing granted by a  
day of stone sleep. He blessed his nature the night he lay battered and  
bleeding, pinned in the cockpit of his downed Messerschmitt, knowing that  
despite the pain, his injuries were not severe enough to prevent him from  
living until dawn. Knowing that the evening after, the Russian fighter  
pilot would be a marked man...or woman. Lieutenant Lily Litvak of an  
all-female fighter unit had been the first to leave him in such a condition.

Then there was the...no, not exactly companionship. He had never  
been close to anyone in the unit. Friendship was a luxury he could not  
afford. Surely a person who associated with the enigmatic Hauptmann Ritter  
von Stein, as he called himself, would notice that his hair never needed  
trimming, that any wounds he might sustain were completely healed by the  
evening after, that his incisor teeth were unusually long and might even be  
described as fangs. He bathed as often as did the humans, but on missions  
into the wilderness he always went alone. How else would he explain his  
clean appearance each evening, uniform pressed as if it had been freshly  
ironed? He snorted with ironic laughter. ~Let alone explaining my stone  
sleep.~

It was hard enough convincing the others to accept his cover story:  
that he suffered from a skin cancer which required him to rest, undisturbed,  
all day. He often heard the word "vampire" whispered behind his back. He  
was certain, however, that only the most superstitious humans actually  
considered vampirism to be a plausible explanation. The gargoyle wondered  
what his fellow supporters of the "ubermensch," the Aryan superman, would  
think if they knew that the six foot, blond-haired, blue-eyed, athletically  
built Ritter von Stein (as he called himself in Russia) was not even a man  
at all.

No, it was not companionship he found at the squadron. It was a  
means of indulging his gargoyle nature, his innate urge to protect. Russia  
was many miles from his home, a castle tucked into the Bavarian mountains.  
While he could travel the distance to Schloss Adler, he knew in his heart  
that he could never rejoin his clan. They would not accept him, not now  
that his appearance had been altered to that of a human man. All he  
retained were his long sharp teeth and the mighty black wings that were  
currently folded up beneath his uniform, and even his wings had been carved  
into a new shape. The sleek batlike pinions were now crossed by an ugly row  
of skeletal joints to enable them to fold up and be concealed beneath human  
clothing. He supposed it was a small price to pay to retain not only the  
ability to fly, but also the last obvious sign of his true gargoyle nature.

In Russia he was far from home and permanently cut off from the Iron  
Clan, but he had succeeded in transferring his loyalty and protectiveness to  
his squadron. He was not popular there, but even those who disliked him  
were guarded by him to the best of his ability. No matter what his face  
looked like, he was still a gargoyle.

And like any other gargoyle, he was uncomfortable being this far  
away from his protectorate and those he had come to view as his charges.  
The Illuminati had promised him that this job would be a short one--go to  
Poland, assassinate a resistance leader in Warsaw, and return to his unit.  
Now the job had come and gone and he was still in Poland, delivering the  
package on the seat beside him to a doctor by the name of Johann Sevarius.

Assassination. His job did not sit comfortably with him. The vivid  
details of a night in England came into his mind, the time when he had shot  
the human friend of a group of English gargoyles.

~That was self-defence,~ Wagner told himself. ~The man knew I was a  
German and had pointed his gun at me. Even being taken prisoner would have  
meant my certain death at dawn.~

Then there was the endless string of hits he'd performed in the name  
of the Illuminati.

~Von Sturm is ruthless. If I'd refused he'd have had me shot. It's  
as simple as that. A fair exchange, one life for another. The target dies  
so I might live...~

Could that be an excuse when there had been so many targets? A life  
for a life was one thing, but in the process of keeping his own he'd killed  
many times. Surely his soul--or what was left of it--could not begin to  
balance those he'd sent to early graves.

~Don't be a fool. If you'd objected they'd have simply killed you  
and sent another assassin. This is how your life must be.~

He shook his head, brushing back the long blond bangs that fell  
forward over his forehead and concealed the slight ridge the stonemason had  
left when he had removed the long crest that had once curved back over the  
head of Wagner the gargoyle, and split into two spirals which had sat  
overtop of his hair just above the points of his ears. He still found it  
odd to be able to comb his hair from brow to neck and not hit that crest.

Wagner began to hum under his breath, the tune of Beethoven's Fur  
Elise filling the car. He loved music and was a magician at the piano.  
From the first time he'd heard the haunting melodies, all he'd wanted was to  
be a musician. Instead he was driving through the Polish evening with a  
package on the passenger seat of his car and an oft-used handgun in his  
pocket.

~They say Lucifer was once the angel of music.~ His mouth twisted  
into a wry smile as he continued into the night towards the little town of  
Auschwitz.

*

The doors of the bar swung wide, and into the smoky room walked a  
man who could have been the model for one of Goebbel's propaganda posters.  
He was tall, well built, and held his head high with pride. His eyes were  
as blue as the Rhine; his hair the colour of wheat. He radiated strength  
and energy, and Ilonka, the barmaid, could see the heads of the serving  
girls turn as the Teutonic stranger walked into the room. Ilonka noticed  
the Knight's Cross around the newcomer's neck, the ribbon of the Iron Cross  
through the buttonhole of his black uniform, and a gleaming Luftwaffe medal.  
No wonder this soldier was proud.

Yet there was an unease there too, a discomfort which Ilonka picked  
up as those blue eyes swept the room, noting every customer and every worker  
in the bar. The newcomer rested his arm on the bar, almost casually, but  
she was certain that should anyone in the room make a wrong move, this man  
would react in an instant. The blue eyes fixed on her, their centers even  
blacker than the uniform of their owner. "I'm looking for Sevarius. Herr  
Doktor Johann Sevarius." The head turned and Ilonka received a handsome  
profile of the stranger's chiselled jaw as his eyes took in all who were  
looking his way, extending his question to them.

A young sergeant got to his feet and saluted. "Sir, you won't find  
him here in town. He almost never leaves the camp."

"Camp?"

"Just outside town," the sergeant said, and gave directions as the  
stranger's fist clenched and unclenched rhythmically on the bar.

*

Half an hour later, the humanlike gargoyle walked through the camp,  
his every footfall stirring up a small cloud of the fine white ash that  
seemed to cover everything here. In his right hand he carried a bag which  
contained Sevarius' package. His eyes were fixed forward, staring at  
nothing, and his jaw was firmly clenched. The brutal guards who cradled  
hungry black weapons, the emaciated prisoners with their baggy tattered  
clothing and haunted eyes, the stinking barracks, the clipboards holding  
papers of death warrants writ large, loomed at the edges of his vision but  
did not register in his mind. There were Things Not To Be Thought About,  
and this camp was first and foremost on that list.

Every time he engaged an enemy fighter, he had to force himself not  
to think of his opponent's fear and pain. Every time he killed, he had to  
bar the thought of his victim's grieving family from his mind. Every time  
he put on the black uniform, he had to deny what it stood for; he had to  
pretend he did not know the cause he had been ordered to uphold. Pretending  
was considerably harder when one was walking through the very heart of  
darkness.

On the right, a crowd of soldiers were clustered around a tiny hole  
at the bottom of the barbed-wire fence. One of them, a corporal, bent over  
to examine the fence over the hole. "Escape," he hissed through clenched  
teeth.

"No, Heini. The hole is too small for a man."

"But for a Jew-rat? Never underestimate what they will do..."

"Send out search teams," barked their sergeant. "And take the dogs.  
If anyone did get out that way, we will find them." His lips split into a  
cold smile. "If possible, bring them back alive. We can make an example  
out of them. Or perhaps the good doctor is in need of some new test  
subjects..."

To Wagner, the words were unearthly, unreal, like something in a  
dream. They had no meaning. They had no bearing on the world, not on his  
world. He moved on.

He finally reached the hut he was looking for and rapped on the  
door. The door was opened a crack and the head of middle-aged man with trim  
brown hair thrust out of it. His eyes could only be described as reptilian.  
He wore a lab coat which had once been white, but was now stained by all  
manner of fluids, some of which were blood. The freshest stains were human  
blood, by the smell of them. Wagner attempted to drive the scent from his  
sensitive gargoyle nostrils. "How may I help you, Hauptmann?" the man  
asked.

"I'm looking for Doctor Johann Sevarius."

"Speaking." The man smiled coldly. Wagner heard rustling within  
the room, and rolled up on the balls of his human feet--a pose natural for  
gargoyles--attempting to see into the hut. Sevarius deliberately maneuvered  
to bar his way. "Are you part of the camp staff?"

"No. I've been sent to deliver a package."

"My experiments are highly classified," Sevarius informed him, and  
Wagner detected no boasting in the statement.

~He's not saying that to build himself up. He's hiding something  
from me.~ Wagner frowned down at the doctor, who was several inches shorter  
than him. Nevertheless, the gargoyle drew himself up to his full height and  
settled his most arrogant air around his body like a cloak. "Believe me, I  
have clearance." He glared down at Sevarius, and reached for the signed  
Fuhrer Order he carried in his left pocket.

Mephistopheles von Sturm, head of the Illuminati, had procured the  
Fuhrer Order for him. The Nazi leaders believed that collaborating  
with the Illuminati had more than paid off. Wagner knew that the  
Illuminati had given Hitler much of the backing that had helped him gain  
power. He could not yet advertise that fact; von Sturm was adamant that the  
Illuminati remain the "silent partners" of the National Socialist Workers'  
Party, and enforced the regulation by permanently silencing any opponents.  
Or rather, by having individuals like Wagner do the silencing. That,  
however, was another matter; what mattered now was that Wagner held an  
order, signed by Hitler, authorizing him to action independent of any  
superior officers save Hitler himself. No one needed to know that the  
orders he followed came not from Adolf Hitler but from Mephistopheles von  
Sturm.

It was a distasteful necessity, but it often had benefits as well as  
drawbacks. It had enabled him to get around the customary military medicals  
and hide his gargoyle nature; conversely, the Illuminati forced him to use  
it to gain permission to go on missions away from the squadron, usually  
assassinations. Now, though, he was about to put one more mark in the "benefit" category by using the Fuhrer Order for the simple pleasure of  
putting the doctor in his place.

"It's rather foolish to believe anyone in a place like this," the  
doctor said, eyeing Wagner up and down in a manner which made him most  
uncomfortable. For a brief irrational moment, he wondered if Sevarius had  
guessed that he was not human.

"Believe this." Wagner held out the Fuhrer Order. "This bag  
contains a package for you." He glanced furtively around. There was not a  
prisoner in sight; they seemed to avoid this area. There were, however, a  
handful of guards watching the doctor and the strange officer for the simple  
lack of anything better to observe. "It would not be wise to do so in plain  
view." The Illuminati were sticklers for secrecy.

"Very well." The doctor leaned back into the room. "Ludwig! Olga!  
Clean up in there immediately!" The sounds of scuffling came from the  
chamber as Wagner impatiently tapped his hands on the outer wall of the hut.  
Finally Sevarius stepped back and allowed Wagner to enter.

The first thing the gargoyle did was sniff the inside of the room,  
and what met his nostrils was profoundly disturbing, even more so than the  
stained gurney in the center of the room, the filthy scalpels, the odd  
liquids that sat in bottles on the counters and occasionally in puddles on  
the floor. Wagner could smell chemicals, and under their harshness were the  
pungent aromas of blood and sweat, as well as other smells which were more  
similar to those of beasts. Worst of all, worse even then the sickly sweet  
odour of death, was the scent of fear. The room positively reeked of it.  
In front of the closed door at the back of the room, Sevarius' two  
assistants glared at him with their arms folded in front of them.

"Let's have it, then," the doctor demanded.

Wagner stepped a few paces forward, trying to disguise his  
discomfort, and as he paused, his hearing picked up a low moan coming from  
behind the closed door. The gargoyle ignored the doctor's insubordination  
and handed over the bag.

As Sevarius slit the paper wrapping of the package with a scalpel,  
Wagner asked him, "So, your job is to provide medical care for the guards  
and prisoners?"

"The guards prefer to go to the doctor in town," Sevarius said with  
a low chuckle, opening the box. A cruel smile slit his lips as he removed  
several bottles of liquid from the package.

Wagner's eyes swept the piles of apparatus at the side of the room.  
"You seem to be underequipped." His hand reached out to a pair of electric  
cables sitting on a nearby table. "These could probably be put to better  
use at the motor pool."

"Leave them." The doctor's eyes blazed into his. "You are meddling  
with things you know nothing about." His eyes travelled along the  
dark-clothed officer's frame once again.

Wagner's mind ran a quick feasibility study, soon coming to the  
conclusion that drawing his Walther and shooting the doctor and his  
assistants on the spot was a rash and unadvisable course of action. More  
was the pity.

Johann was bowing his head over a letter enclosed in the package  
with the vials, smiling and nodding. "Very good." He turned to Ludwig and  
Olga. "We have instructions to proceed with our latest experiments. There  
are people who are very interested in the results." The gargoyle shifted  
his stance to get a little closer to Sevarius, and for a few moments he was  
able to glance at the words typewritten on the paper. He caught a glimpse  
of the words "mind control" and "maximum human endurance levels" before the  
doctor folded the letter back up.

Olga and Ludwig both had cold smiles on their faces. "What about  
the genetic mutation experiments?" Ludwig asked, directing the question to  
Sevarius but staring at Wagner the whole time, grinning cruelly. ~You can't  
stop us,~ he seemed to be saying.

"Test subject Gliedschirm, Breva is still experiencing cerebral  
bleeding," Olga reported, giving him the same mocking smile. ~You see what  
we're doing here, but what are you going to do about it? Officer. Young  
arrogant Luftwaffe officer, what can you do?~

Sevarius looked back over his shoulder. "Is that all, Hauptmann?"

"Yes," Wagner found himself saying, and turning around stiffly.  
"I'll be going now." His voice was mechanical.

Johann Sevarius chuckled. "I rather expected you might."


	2. Chapter 2

**Black Wings Passed Over**

Chapter the Second

In the business of war, Wagner had seen many unpleasant sights which  
had sent other men into nausea, shock or worse. Those experiences were  
enough to tear the mind, human or gargoyle, apart. Living through them  
relied on discipline and complete focus on the task at hand. Living after  
them was most easily done by shelving the nightmare memories in some lost  
corner of the mind, to be forgotten shortly afterward. By the time he'd  
walked across the compound, Wagner had almost managed to wipe the experience  
in the doctor's hut from his mind. Soon, he knew, he would eliminate his  
entire visit to Auschwitz. The sight of his car was like a beacon from  
heaven. He felt the same way he did when he was approaching his home  
airfield in the hour before dawn, out of ammunition in a damaged aircraft.

Wagner leaned hard against the side of the Mercedes for a moment,  
collecting himself and searching for the energy he would need to re-fix the  
emotionless mask on his face just long enough to drive out of Auschwitz once  
and for all. He bowed his head, closing his eyes and drawing in a few  
ragged breaths. The faces of the prisoners danced through his thoughts,  
glaring at him accusingly in the instants before they vanished from sight.  
They were the residue of the thoughts he had all but suppressed.

His ears pricked and he realized that other officers were in the  
area, any one of whom could come across him in this most ignoble position  
and ask some very awkward questions about his acceptance of the great and  
glorious cause. ~Erase memories later. Act now.~ He steeled himself and  
opened the door of his car.

Approaching the gate, Wagner resisted a sudden irrational impulse to  
step on the gas and crash through it, holding the pedal to the floor until  
he was as far away as possible. Instead he braked to a halt with the same  
iron discipline that had held him together through mission after mission for  
the Bavarian Illuminati. He locked his body and mind in position as he  
waited for the time when he could pass through.

The guard was in a morbidly good humour. Wagner showed his pass and  
was given a wave to proceed, but as he lifted his foot off the brake he  
noticed a long line of huddling prisoners--mostly old people and  
children--coming out of a shed and progressing towards a building labelled  
BATH HOUSE. They clutched bars of soap and looked around in stunned  
confusion. Some of the children were crying for parents who were not there  
to respond. The elders quietly took the children in their arms and held  
them as the straggling line relentlessly progressed towards the bath house.

The guard followed his gaze and laughed, showing all his teeth.  
"Ah, the delousification of the Reich."

Wagner's mouth twitched and his discipline faltered just enough for  
him to press on the gas pedal a little harder than normal. The black  
Mercedes jerked forward, sprinting from the mouth of hell.

*

He kept his face cold and impassive as he drove down the road that  
led away from the town of Auschwitz, towards the highway that would take him  
towards Leningrad. The moon was rising overhead, a detached witness to the  
events of the night. Wagner pressed down a little harder on the gas,  
watching the trees whip by. The car's interior was a little self-contained  
unit, isolated from the world outside, holding him safe as he travelled into  
the darkness, back to Russia, back to his squadron, away from this place...  
Away. He could feel the camp's aura looming larger and larger behind him,  
threatening to swallow him up. A cry tore from his throat as he realized  
that no matter how fast or how far he drove, he would always carry Auschwitz  
around with him, in his mind, in his heart...

What had Faust told him? "Certain sacrifices must be made for the  
advancement of the Illuminati and the general good." In other words, one  
could not make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. It was a comfort  
every time he'd been sent on an assassination. Surely one life was a small  
price to pay for a world in which gargoyles would be safe to live in the  
open. He was the only one of his kind who knew what it was like to be a  
part of human society, and even he could not do it without concealing his  
true nature.

Someday, though, that life would be over. Then, von Sturm said,  
humans and gargoyles would live together in true harmony. Gargoyles would  
be the vanguards of peace, watching over the humans to quell their more  
destructive impulses and ensure everything in the new world order took place  
on time: the planting of the crops, the nursing of the sick, the education  
of the young. Humans merely needed shepherding to curb their quarrelsome  
tendencies. The Illuminati had a plan to accomplish that and bring about a  
better world.

~And this world will be born out of blood and fire?~

It was an odd thought to cross his mind, and as he drove he turned  
his attention to pondering this new question. It proved a convenient escape  
from the memories he wished to forget. Puzzle though he might, he could not  
see how the worldwide conflict he'd found himself enmeshed in could bring  
the Illuminati's goals any closer to reality. Von Sturm's master plan,  
which he had been aggressively pursuing for almost two hundred years,  
sounded similar to the most idealistic interpretation of Communism. Wagner  
knew that in practice, Communism was far, far different from the workers'  
paradise its ideology had promised.

~Perhaps von Sturm's new world order will be just as different in  
practice.~

That thought was outright treason and so Wagner von Schloss did not  
allow his mind to pursue it. ~I must guard against such notions.~ He'd  
thought of treason before, in those moments when he'd come up against the  
dark side of the Illuminati and struggled to make sense of what he saw  
there.

It started with Brunhilde, the lovely hunter-green gargoyle who had  
been his mate. She had found him attractive enough when he had been a young  
crested warrior, so full of hope and promise. That attraction had vanished  
like the stars from the early morning sky the second he'd been recarved into  
a human form. She had wanted a strong soldier as a mate; having him  
sacrifice his gargoyle features in the name of the Illuminati had not been  
part of the plan. Fickle, perhaps, but he had loved her.

~Love? Was it really, truly _love_?~

~I don't even know what love is.~

Yes, he did. Love was the young man who'd thrown himself across his  
injured father to protect him from Wagner's gun. The father had been his  
target, and his instructions were to kill him at any cost. When the son had  
tried to stop him, he'd simply shot him first. Minutes later, his father  
followed the son to whatever afterlife awaited them. He still remembered  
hearing the cries of agony when the rest of the family had found the two  
bodies. What had he _done_ that night?

Think of Russia. The Soviet pilots who fell like insects swatted  
from the sky, not from any lack of bravery on their part but rather from  
their hopelessly antiquated equipment. Perhaps the Russians were the truly  
courageous, for they had to know how the odds were stacked against them, and  
yet squadron after squadron came forth to face the invaders every day.  
Their compatriots on the ground did the same, and the result was devastation  
beyond Wagner's comprehension. The bodies of all the soldiers were horror  
enough, and yet he could not neglect to add the starving Russian civilians,  
the German soldiers losing digits, limbs or lives to the bitter freezing  
cold, the towns and cities in ruins, the people of all ages and  
nationalities stricken by rampant disease.

~Purge. The old order must die so the new might be reborn.~

But why did those deaths have to include people like Bootsi, the  
young teenage pilot who'd lived with an eagerness to serve the Fatherland  
and died in Wagner's arms on a rainy spring night in France beside the ruins  
of his downed fighter? Why the little Russian girl he'd shared a slice of  
his bread with--she couldn't have been more than six or seven--and later  
seen lying dead in the street with a bullet hole in the back of her head?  
And why--why all those people in the camp? How could even the Nazis have  
allowed that Sevarius to....do what he did? What could those prisoners have  
ever done to deserve their fate, the elderly, the children, the confused men  
and women who wondered why their God had forsaken them, only to come up with  
no answer?

These were certainly Things Not To Be Thought About, and Wagner  
struggled to replace them with something else. He concentrated on the road  
ahead, examining every stone and rut and overhanging branch. It was much,  
much easier to concentrate on the task at hand and let other things happen  
as they would, out of sight and out of mind. As he scanned the sides of the  
road for diversions, he noticed a flicker of movement in the bushes.

He slowed the car and let his keen eyes pierce the darkness. Far  
ahead, the bushes rustled and out stepped a child. He was about thirteen,  
with a head of dark curly hair and a turned-up nose, and Wagner could easily  
have imagined him at home on a playing-field, or classroom window, or  
running along the street with friends, were it not for the hunted look on  
his face.

~Lost, most likely,~ the gargoyle thought, and wondered how the  
youth had come to be wandering about in the Polish forest in the dead of a  
winter's night. Another explanation hovered just out of his grasp, but  
Wagner acted on the hunch it gave him. He instinctively pulled over quickly  
and killed the headlights of his car. The boy was scanning the road,  
looking for the vehicle he had heard. Moments later, a troop transport  
passed Wagner's position and the boy disappeared back into the bushes until  
its motor had faded from even the gargoyle's sensitive hearing. Then two  
figures cautiously poked their heads out of the foliage.

With the boy was a little girl, perhaps four or five. She held  
tightly to his hand and appeared very frightened. The youth whispered in  
her ear, gesturing back into the forest. She shook her head and clung to  
him. Satisfied that he was alone, the boy stepped out onto the roadway, and  
in the dim light of the waning moon, Wagner saw the Star of David sewn to  
the boy's rumpled shirt.

~A hole too small for a man...but not too small for a child.~

The boy beckoned, and another girl, a year or two younger than he  
was, emerged with a baby in her arms. The little girl tagged along behind,  
and she too had the star on her dress.

~Children. Small enough to slip out from under the noses of the  
guards during intake. Likely their parents provided a diversion that their  
children might live.~ He corrected himself. ~Might escape. It's a prison  
camp, after all.~ Then he considered what might motivate parents to bid  
helpless children to flee into the wilderness with only another child to  
lead them, and coupled his thesis with some of the things he had seen: the  
doctor's hut, the lines for the bath house, the chimneys that belched smoke  
day and night, and the ash...the ash that still clung to his boots. ~Might  
_live_.~

Live? What chance did four children have, lost in the Polish  
countryside and with trained soldiers on their trail? In the distance, a  
dog howled.

Wagner straightened the Knight's Cross around his neck. ~It is none  
of my business. I am opening my thoughts to putting myself in a dangerous  
situation that could well mean my death, not to mention loss of honour and  
outright treason.~

~I could proceed, pretend I hadn't seen them...no. Even that is  
neglect of duty.~

~Why am I thinking this way? These children are none of my  
concern!~

Children. They were _children_, for God's sake. ~How could  
children stand in the way of the Illuminati's goals? They are lost in the  
wilderness and ignorant of the ways of the world. They know nothing of  
grand designs; they are condemned simply for _being_...~ Condemned as  
gargoyles had once been, long ago, when their existence had been known to  
the world.

~Is existence such a crime?~

His ears perked. He could hear, behind him on the road, the baying  
of dogs. For these children, their escape attempt had ended before it had  
even begun. What had the sergeant said? Sevarius could always use new test  
subjects...

Before he was aware what he was doing, he had started the car,  
U-turned on the road, and headed back towards the camp to intercept the  
search team.

He came upon them within a few minutes, pulling over and stepping  
out of the car towards the sergeant in charge of the team. The man's sleepy  
eyes grew wide when he realized that a highly decorated officer was coming  
his way, out here in the middle of nowhere, and he raised his arm in the  
standard salute. "Heil Hitler."

Wagner returned the salute. "Good evening, Herr Feldwebel. A fine  
night to be out and about."

The sergeant snorted. "Hardly, sir. Were it not for my sense of  
duty to the Fatherland, I would be asleep in my bed." Several members of  
his detail were yawning as well, the gargoyle noted, most likely the result  
of a late night at the bar the evening before.

"And what duty could have you traipsing through the fields at all  
hours of the night?"

"Perimeter security. It is my task to ensure all Jews delivered to  
the camp remain there."

"Surely the camp has better security than that," Wagner chided.

"It is impressive, sir, and if I might boast, extremely efficient in  
processing the subhumans. However, we pride ourselves on our thoroughness  
and prefer to ensure that none have slipped through our net."

"I noticed nothing coming up the road tonight," the gargoyle lied.  
The sergeant's men were leaning on one another, and the sergeant himself had  
to stifle a yawn. Wagner raised a blond eyebrow and remarked, "Tired troops  
are most inefficient and rarely serve the Fatherland effectively."

The sergeant interpreted the remark as a sign of Wagner's disfavour,  
just as the gargoyle had intended, and did the best he could to defend  
himself. "Sir, we have only so many men and security is a vital concern..."

Wagner cut him off, his voice soothing now. "You seem like a  
devoted soldier, Herr Feldwebel, and devoted soldiers deserve reward. Take  
the evening off, all of you. You have earned it."

The sergeant looked stunned for a moment, and then his face broke  
out in a wide smile. "Thank you, Hauptmann," he said as he saluted. He  
barked orders to his men, all of whom gave Wagner an eyes left as they  
turned around to head back to their quarters.

~That gets rid of the soldiers--for now,~ Wagner thought. There  
were more such units, many more, hunting in the night. ~If I'm going to do  
this--~ he couldn't bring himself to call it treason ~--I might as well  
finish the job.~ Once the sergeant and his men were out of sight, Wagner  
U-turned in the middle of the road and put the gas pedal to the floor,  
racing back to the spot where he had seen the children.

*

An hour later, Wagner von Schloss, Captain in the SS, crouched on  
the lower branches of a tree with his wings folded behind him. He wondered  
how he would explain the deep scratches in his dress boots, and half-laughed  
at the ridiculous thought of submitting a recommendation that jackboots be  
made suitable for perching in trees. Then he returned to the task at hand,  
sniffing the wind for scent.

The car would only slow him down now. He'd covered a lot of ground  
from the air, and he was sure he'd caught a flicker of motion from this area  
as he soared overhead. Now it was a matter of pinpointing the creature  
responsible...

His ear perked as he heard a sound carried on a breeze. A night  
bird perhaps? Moments later it came again, and this time it was definitely  
the crying of a baby. In a rush of wings, the tree branch was left empty,  
swaying from the powerful takeoff of its former occupant.

*

"Hush," Rachel whispered, but in her arms little Eli only struggled  
and kicked the more.

"He's probably hungry," Esther suggested, tugging on the older  
girl's worn dress. "I am too."

"We haven't any milk," Rachel moaned, and could not help but wonder  
if she'd drink it all herself if they had. She hadn't had anything like a  
decent meal in the month she'd been at the camp, and the poor diet, coupled  
with the amount of exercise she'd done in walking all night, carrying the  
baby, not to mention the constant presence of fear, were conspiring to bring  
her down.

"We must keep going," said the oldest, Josef, grasping her hand.  
"If they catch us, we will die."

Rachel nodded and struggled on, wishing to God that she would wake  
up and find herself safely back in her bed in Heidelberg with her little  
brother beside her, not walking through the Polish forest, carrying a baby  
whose parents--whose true name--she did not know. Eli was what she had  
chosen to call him.

The parents, whoever they might have been, had hidden their baby in  
a travelling case. They had gone to their deaths in the ovens. The baby  
had gone to the processing shed, where Jewish workers sorted out the  
newcomers' possessions. Jewelry and valuables went in one bin; rags in  
another, to be sed in manufacture for the German army; photographs in a  
large box that was later burned along with its contents. Rachel had been  
the one to find little Eli while working her shift at the end of the day,  
and a lax guard detail had enabled her to hide the baby under her apron.  
She knew her brother, Josef, had planned to escape that evening.

She didn't know who Esther's parents had been either. They had  
taken a terrible chance during intake that afternoon. Josef had distracted  
the guard while Rachel had grabbed the hand of the first child she had seen  
and pulled her away from the line of newcomers. All the other little girls  
and boys taken into the camp, the ones whom Esther had played with in the  
crowded cattle car that had brought her to Auschwitz, were too young to work  
for the Nazis. They were now part of the fine white ash that drifted down  
from the oven smokestacks like tears.

Josef tried to act brave as he led the little band further away from  
the camp. The cruel truth was that he had very little idea of how to get to  
the place he hoped to reach. The words of his mother cycled through his  
head. ~Josef, you must get out. You must take your sister and get away!~

"But I don't know where to go," he had said.

"Away! To Krakow if you can."

"Why can't you come with us?"

She had sighed, and with that sound he finally came to understand  
the feeling of bitter suffering he had read about in the Talmud. "My son, I  
love you." She had knelt down and stroked his hair. "But I am assistant to  
the leader of the sorting detail. The guards will notice my absence. They  
will be slower to notice yours. You are smaller, small enough to slip  
beneath the fence."

"What about Papa?" His fingers had traced the numbers of her  
tattoo. He had a similar one on his arm.

She held him close, and when she drew back there had been tears in  
her eyes. "Papa is dead."

He had suspected as much. His father had been injured in a factory  
accident when he was very small, and his left arm had been almost useless  
after that. It had never prevented him from being a shopkeeper, but the  
Nazis weren't looking for shopkeepers, and they preferred to weed out the  
weak early.

His mother had made him memorize the lines that gave him hope now,  
as surely as any sacred reading. He recited the address again and again in  
his mind until it became a comforting rhythm set to the tempo of his  
footfalls. The children were concentrating on nothing more than putting one  
foot in front of the other when directly ahead of them, the bushes rustled,  
and their worst fear stood before them.

He wasn't a stormtrooper. His uniform was pure black, not the grey  
of the camp guards, and some kind of gold ornament glittered on each  
shoulder in the wan moonlight. He was alone, without even a dog, and he  
carried no weapon in his hands. Had the four Jews been adults, they might  
have attacked a lone Nazi; but they were not adults, only scared children,  
and the figure before them was like something out of a nightmare. Rachel  
cried out and stumbled onto her knees, releasing her hold on the baby. He  
slid down her lap and began crying loudly. Esther screamed, a shill barb  
that pierced the night, and hid behind Rachel for protection.

Josef tried to think, but his thoughts were scared mice skittering  
around in his head. The fear in the air was palpable. He felt that it was  
his duty to take care of the others, but what could a boy as yet too young  
to grow a beard do against a soldier? He could not even face up to a camp  
guard, let alone this apparition of starlight and darkness that had come to  
bestow the wrath of the Lord.

~My son, you must save yourselves.~

~My son, you must save _yourself_.~

~Save myself.~

At that, Josef obeyed his body's command to run.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter the Third**

Wagner stood before the children for a fraction of a second, waiting  
to see how they would react. At first, they all seemed paralyzed with fear,  
and that would make his job easy enough. Then the boy had broken to run.

~If he wants to run, it's his own problem. Let the dogs get him.~  
But that was cruel, and besides, Wagner couldn't let the youth get away.  
Groups of gargoyles needed only one individual to start something before the  
others felt pressure to follow suit. In this respect, humans and gargoyles  
were much alike. Wagner could see the little girl considering the same  
action herself as she clung to the older girl, wanting to flee and yet too  
afraid to let go of her elder's sleeve. Unless he wanted them all to panic  
and scatter into the forest, he had to stop the boy.

He'd dropped to a crouch in one fluid motion as soon as the boy  
turned around. One lunge had gotten the gargoyle airborne, and from there  
it was only a matter of spreading his wings and gliding down onto the  
fleeing boy like a bird of prey.

One moment, the Nazi had been on the other side of the girls. The  
next, he was directly behind Josef, clasping the boy's shoulder in one great  
hand. Josef struggled, but could not escape. Suddenly, he realized that  
the grip, while intensely firm, was not painful as long as he was not  
fighting it. Josef settled down, knowing his attempts to be futile, and  
turned his head to look into the blue eyes of his captor.

"Don't run. I won't hurt you." At these words, the dumbfounded boy  
allowed Wagner to turn him around to face the girls. "Don't be afraid. I  
know that's a lot to ask, but I'm not here to hurt you." Josef relaxed a  
little. So far, the black-uniformed man had not reacted as a guard would  
have.

Wagner stood up for a moment, sniffing the air and listening for  
sounds of pursuit, then dropped back to the level of the children. "Quiet  
the baby," he ordered, and a stunned Ruth complied as best she could while  
the gargoyle added, "The forest is full of troops searching for you." His  
eyes probed the vegetation. "We don't need them to hear us."

"Who are you?" Josef stammered.

The blond stranger ignored his question. "So now you're out. So  
where do you think you're going?"

"Krakow."

"Why Krakow?"

Josef gulped, as if he'd said too much already. The newcomer may  
not have done anything hostile yet, but he was still a Nazi, and not to be  
trusted. ~But if he's a Nazi, he doesn't act like any Nazi I've ever  
known.~

"Son, if I put you on the main street of Krakow you'd just  
be picked up by the first patrol and sent right back to Auschwitz." The boy  
remained silent, and a note of irritation crept into Wagner's voice. "Look,  
if you don't tell me anything there's no way I can help you."

~Stupid. StupidstupidSTUPID!~ the gargoyle berated himself. ~There  
is no WAY this kid is going to trust you, not with you standing here in full  
dress uniform. Look what you've gotten yourself into--the kid'll get caught  
and tell them all about the traitor who said he wanted to help...~ He  
should have simply driven on. Well, there was no help for it now. He'd  
started, and now he had to see it through.

"You're going to help us?" Rachel asked, incredulous.

"Yes. And it's my neck on the line now too, if I'm caught with you,  
so I'd appreciate a little cooperation."

"Why should we trust you?" the boy asked, and the question sparked  
both irritation and an irrational stab of anger.

Wagner raised his eyes to stare directly into Josef's, and the boy  
could see an unearthly glow around the eyes of the man in the black uniform.  
The stranger's voice, too, was deeper, harsher, and something not entirely  
human as he clipped his words. "What choice do you have?"

There was that. The man blinked, and when his eyelids opened, his  
eyes had returned to normal.

"Are you with the Resistance?" Rachel timidly asked.

Wagner paused for a moment, actually surprised by her question, and  
then nodded. In a way he was, now.

"My uncle is a member of the Polish resistance," Josef said. "He  
sent us letters, telling us to flee Germany for a safe country, and if we  
could not find one, to join him in Krakow." He paused a moment more. "This  
is where my mother told me to go," he said quietly, and recited the address.

"That's only thirty miles from here. Hardly a secure place to be."

"Some of the people in the camp were from Denmark and Belgium and  
Romania and they weren't safe there either," Josef retorted without  
thinking. He suddenly realized his rashness and added, "Sir." The German  
simply looked at him and nodded. He swallowed and continued, "My uncle will  
move us through the resistance network. That starts in Krakow."

Wagner's jaw set in a firm line. "Then Krakow it will be." He got  
up and held out his hand to the little girl, who hesitated only a moment  
before she wrapped her fingers around his. "Come." Wagner walked off into  
the darkness, the older two trailing after him with the baby in Josef's  
arms.

*

Wagner checked the road, but there was no one in sight. Nor were  
there any scents of humans, dogs or vehicle exhaust, and the night was  
quiet. He gestured, and the four Jewish children emerged from the forest  
and approached the black Mercedes staff car.

Esther reached for the door handle, but the gargoyle clasped her  
hand in his and led her to the back of the vehicle. He shoved the key into  
the latch and unlocked it. Rachel and Josef both peered into the trunk.  
Wagner grasped the handle of his suitcase, the collar of his overcoat, and  
the top of his toolbox, lifting them out and putting them on the side of the  
road.

He examined the inside of the trunk and its red carpet lining. The  
children looked up at him, a combination of hope and resignation on their  
faces, a look of deep concentration on his. He leaned over, aiming  
carefully, then proceeded to form a fist, grit his teeth, shut his eyes, and  
drive his hand downward with all the force of an angry gargoyle. Ruth  
whimpered when she saw the stranger's eyelids flash as if a powerful lamp  
had been turned on behind them. The metal of the bottom of the trunk  
separated beneath the blow, opening a hole in the bottom of the car.

Wagner winced and withdrew his fist. There was a nasty cut down the  
outside of his left hand. He fell to his knees and grabbed ahold of the hem  
of Esther's dress. "Mind if I borrow a little?" he asked through clenched  
teeth. The child stared at him, uncomprehending, and Wagner tore a strip  
off the dress and used it to bind the wound.

Josef peered in at the hole. "What's that for? Sir."

"Air. Now in you go."

"We're going in the trunk?" Esther squealed.

Wagner crossed his arms and lifted an eyebrow, a smile playing  
around his lips. "Sorry, but it's the best seat I can offer you." He was  
gratified by a slight smile on the girl's mouth. "This way, even if I get  
stopped on the road, no one will see you. Now, if I do stop, I want you to  
say _nothing_. Do nothing. Not even if you hear voices around the car,  
understand? If they hear you talking or banging on the lid, we'll all end  
up shot. Verstehen?" All three nodded. "Now in you get."

*

Wagner lifted Esther into the trunk as Josef clambered up and in.  
Then he frowned; the space was desperately small, and he feared the children  
might all smother, especially the baby. He rested his attention on the  
little human being held in the older girl's arms, and came up with another  
idea.

"You'll be in the back with the baby," he said to Rachel. He opened  
the rear door of the car. "On the floor. You must take even more caution  
to be still and keep yourself covered."

As Rachel settled herself in on the floor between the seats, Wagner  
laid his greatcoat overtop of her. He opened his suitcase and removed  
several more items, carefully wrapping them around her and the baby, leaving  
the odd gap for air. By the time he was done, nothing more than a heap of  
clothing and miscellaneous items could be seen on the floor of his car.

At last, the gargoyle lowered the trunk lid gently to ensure that  
Josef and Esther were all the way inside, and then shut it closed. He  
walked around the back of the vehicle and deposited his toolbox and  
now-empty suitcase on the opposite side of the car from the concealed girl  
and baby. Moments later, the Mercedes roared to life and started down the  
road to Krakow.

*

He stopped half an hour later at a small roadside inn. The place  
was somewhat out of his way, but right now that didn't matter. Fifteen  
minutes ago, the baby had started crying, likely from hunger. To keep it  
quiet on the way into Krakow, the baby would need to be fed.

Wagner sauntered up to the counter as any young Luftwaffe fighter  
pilot would, winking rakishly at the serving girls, and requested two loaves  
of bread. Then, with his best "lady-killer" smile, he asked the waitress if  
she would please fill his canteen with water. She was quite happy to  
comply.

Wagner ground his back teeth together as he waited. He hated being  
in places like this. He worried that everyone in them would suddenly  
realize that he was not human like the rest of them. The attentions of  
human females were especially awkward. He had to encourage them, as any man  
would; and yet, he had to be careful that none of the girls made up her mind  
to come home with him. He'd made a habit of wearing a wedding ring he'd  
picked up in a pawn shop in Paris so that he would have a valid excuse. The  
gargoyle admitted that what disturbed him most was the fact that he found  
certain of the women attractive, even though they were not of his species.  
It was frustrating, frightening, and confusing all at once.

God, he needed a smoke. It was a bad habit he was pressured to  
indulge in when he was unusually tense. Ah, well, many others on the  
Russian front had also picked it up, and on a far more regular basis. But  
he must not make excuses. Wagner made a note that in the future, those  
around him on a regular basis might realize what his smoking signified and  
use the information against him. He would have to guard against that--or  
play it to his advantage.

If he had ever been entitled to a cigarette, though, tonight was  
certainly the night. He requested three packages from the innkeeper and  
laid down several Marks too many, only to receive too little change in  
return. Tonight he did not question it. He would receive more than his  
money's worth shortly. The innkeeper had told his wife to fetch the  
cigarettes, and she had handed her baby to her older daughter in order to do  
so. Where there was a baby, there would be milk, and hopefully bottles as  
well.

Wagner slipped the cigarettes into his pocket as he walked out the  
door. No sooner was it shut than the gargoyle was around the side of the  
building, peering into the windows until he found the kitchen. The window  
proved no match for a gargoyle's strength and within moments he was inside,  
helping himself to a baby bottle which sat on the counter. As he filled it  
with milk from the pitcher, he kept his ears and nostrils perked for  
approaching humans, but none came. By the time the innkeeper's wife entered  
the kitchen, the black Mercedes with its fragile human cargo was long gone.

*

Once he was well down the road from the inn, Wagner von Schloss  
turned his car onto a dirt track and drove further into the forest before  
stopping it. He walked around to the back and opened the trunk, allowing  
two heads to pop out for a breath of air. The little girl's cheeks were  
wet; she'd obviously been crying. Wagner handed the boy a loaf of bread and  
the canteen before closing the lid again. The other loaf, and the bottle,  
went under the greatcoat in the back seat.

He was saving these children who'd have died for nothing. He was  
betraying his comrades who'd died for the cause. Strange, how he felt both  
good and badly at the same time.

*

It was just after four-thirty A.M. when they finally entered Krakow.  
The guards at the check points--and, surprisingly enough, there had been  
several check points--had been too tired to do anything more than a perform  
a cursory examination of Wagner's identification papers. The baby had been  
blessedly quiet, for which Wagner was grateful. He could easily have killed  
every man at the checkpoint, but murdering those from his own side was still  
a last recourse.

It did not take him long to find the address he was looking for,  
despite an unusual number of German Army troop trucks, support vehicles, and  
even the odd tank in the roads. The street where the children's uncle lived  
was empty at that hour of the night. The gargoyle's eyes swept up and down  
the street before he opened the trunk of his car. "We're here. Quickly  
now." Josef and Esther hastily clambered out of the trunk, and Wagner shut  
it. He opened the back door of the car and proceeded to rouse Rachel.

Wagner examined the building, his eyes probing the darkened windows.  
"Suppose your uncle's not home?" He wondered what he would do if there was  
no one in the house. He could hardly stay and care for the children  
himself.

"Then we will wait for him," Josef replied, his hand still clutching  
the nibbled remnant of the loaf Wagner had given him. He took Esther's  
hand. Followed by Rachel, who carried Eli, they made their way up the  
crumbling concrete steps to the door.

Wagner made his way around the automobile. His keen eyes caught a  
flicker of movement at one of the windows; the face of an older man peered  
suspiciously at his vehicle. It meant his job was done. ~I've helped them  
as much as I can. They are now on their own.~

~And that,~ Wagner thought to himself, ~is that.~ He started his  
engine and drove off, never once looking back as the door opened cautiously,  
as Rachel hugged her uncle, as Josef watched the black car vanish into the  
night.

*

Shortly thereafter, Wagner located a hotel where he could spend the  
night. His keen eyes picked up unusual activity as he parked his staff car  
in the town square. German troop transports and support vehicles were  
parked in a block on the opposite side of the square, and SS commandos  
dressed in winter camouflage walked to and from the various buildings.  
~It's as if the town were to be used as the staging ground for an upcoming  
assault.~

Dawn was fast approaching as Wagner checked himself into the hotel.  
The hotel, too, was choked with hard-faced Nazi soldiers who were burdened  
with an impressive array of weaponry. They took no pains to conceal their  
weapons and swaggered around the city as if they were waiting for one false  
move from an unfortunate peasant to give them an excuse to wipe Krakow off  
the map.

Passing a particularly arrogant pair of stormtroopers, Wagner  
wondered how the two men would fare in a fight against an angry gargoyle  
with a concealed handgun. He smirked to himself, imagining a stormtrooper  
on his knees in tears after one look at Wagner's glowing eyes and pointed  
fangs. Then the gargoyle shook his head, reminding himself that he must  
never underestimate an enemy. It was just such underestimation that had  
time and again given him the opening he needed to kill swift and sure.

As he took the room key from the hotel manager, Wagner did not need  
to look outside the window to know that the first rays of the morning sun  
were already peeking above the horizon. He could feel the impending day in  
his bones. Before he entered stone sleep, though, he wanted a question  
answered. He turned, addressing the manager as he left the foyer for his  
room. "There are many personnel in town. What for?"

The manager, a man of late middle age, was obviously frightened by  
the military-political nature of the question. "They are here to eliminate  
the resistance."

"Jews?"

"Some of them are. Others are Poles who..." The man swallowed  
hard. "...who...object...to your presence here."

"I see." Wagner nodded, his thoughts racing back to the Jewish  
children.

~I have done more than my share. They are on their own now!~

The gargoyle addressed the frightened man. "Thank you. I am very  
tired and will be resting throughout the day. I am not to be disturbed for  
any reason. Is that clear?" The manager nodded in agreement. "Good."  
Wagner opened the door and went inside.

He closed it, locking and bolting the door, then went searching for  
the nearest closet. There was an armoire on the other side of the room  
which looked promising. He sprinted over to it, flung one of its doors  
wide, and jumped inside. He was reaching out to close the doors after him  
when the sun rose, encasing him in stone.

*

Wagner awakened at evening the next night with a clatter of hundreds  
of fragments of stone skin against the inside of the armoire. He yawned,  
scratching himself on the back of the neck with one hand as his mind  
reviewed the events of the night before. He was in the process of removing  
his tunic and shirt in order to stretch his wings when he remembered what  
the hotel manager had told him almost half a day ago--that the unit of  
stormtroopers was in town to root out the local resistance. The same group,  
no doubt, that the boy's uncle belonged to.

~You did what you could. They are ON THEIR OWN NOW!~

He shook off his thoughts and wondered if they'd consider him late  
by the time he arrived at his base in Russia. He thought of possible  
excuses he could use, thought of what he had actually done last evening,  
thought of those children who'd escaped from hell only to be abandoned in  
purgatory, as the death squads descended...

~Gott verdamnt.~

*

"Where's my gun?" Friedrich Tetzel asked his friend.

"How would I know?" the other soldier replied. "If you'd take  
better care of your equipment you wouldn't have these problems. You're  
forever losing things."

"I set it right here." Tetzel thumped the now-empty table. "I know  
I did!" By this point, his machine gun was almost a mile away, and six  
hundred feet above the frozen soil, nestled on a bed of black uniform cloth  
between two leathery wings.

*

Wagner searched the roads and forests around Krakow for hours while  
the moon rose in the sky, reached its zenith, and began to fall again. He'd  
perched atop the uncle's home for a good hour before he'd lost his patience  
and broken in. There had been no sign of any life there. They'd likely  
left in daylight. Who was to say where they were now?

He'd almost convinced himself of the hopelessness of his mission  
when he heard shouts and a few scattered gunshots from the forest below him.  
Wagner's sharp eyes picked out a group of about fifteen SS commandos running  
through a clearing, guns at the ready. He moved his line of vision forward  
and saw the objects of their pursuit: a middle aged man and the two older  
Jewish children.

Wagner would never know that baby Eli had been adopted by a local  
family, or that little Esther was on her way to France with a local  
resistance agent, posing as his daughter. What he did know was that the  
three beneath him were certain to die. The soldiers were quickly closing  
the distance between them and their quarry.

Tetzel's stolen machine gun was heavy on his back. Until now he'd  
managed to convince himself that what he was doing had no bearing on the  
German cause. Four Jewish children would not affect the outcome of the war.  
Freeing them caused no one any harm. Saving them now would be something  
else again.

As he dove from the sky, he realized that he had crossed a line from  
which there was no going back. He'd committed himself to another cause.

*

Abraham Sargnegel realized the futility of running seconds later.  
If the Germans were going to gun him down, he could take a few of their  
number with him. "Keep running!" he urged his nephew and niece, as he  
stopped and withdrew a 9mm automatic from beneath his jacket.

*

The SS corporal thought it was an airplane at first. Bullets came  
down like lightning, striking down the men around him. His ears missed the  
roar of engines or the swoop of a metal craft pulling out of a dive. All  
his eyes could make out was a dark shape that passed overhead, briefly  
blanking out the stars.

Somewhere near him, a wounded man screamed in agony.

"What the hell's going on?" another soldier demanded.

"Where is it?" cried a third, covering his head as if to ward off  
the wrath from above. Several men who were not wounded began firing their  
machine guns randomly into the sky.

There was no sound, no warning before the deadly hail came again,  
from a lower level and with greater accuracy, cutting a swath in their  
ranks.

"Find where it's coming from!" ordered their lieutenant, his quarry  
momentarily forgotten. The soldiers searched the forest all around them in  
a hopeless quest for a machine-gun nest. The gun chattered again, then  
abruptly fell silent while there were still a few soldiers standing.

"Fan out and find them!" the lieutenant called to his remaining men.  
"Corporal! Help me deal with the Jews. They mustn't get a..." His voice  
died off in a gurgle as a bullet buried itself in his chest.

Bang. Bang. Two more men fell.

Ahead of him, there was a rustle of wings, and the corporal actually  
dropped his gun in shock at the sight of the dark winged being that  
descended from the sky, placing itself between the commandos and their  
quarry.

*

"What in God's holy name..." Sargnegel began, his right hand still  
clutching his gun.

"Uncle, don't shoot!" Josef implored him.

"I thought I told you to run," the man replied angrily, but he  
listened to the boy anyway.

"That's the man...thing...who saved our lives."

*

Wagner fired his Walther until the magazine was empty. He stuffed  
it in his pocket and evaluated the odds. There were still two men standing.  
He lunged himself at the armed one.

The SS man fired a shot that went through Wagner's left wing. The  
wound smarted, but did no more to stop the diving gargoyle than a pebble  
thrown at a windshield would stop a freight truck. Wagner's left hand  
pushed the soldier over with the force of the gargoyle's full weight, while  
his right hand ripped the gun from the man's grasp. His left wing furled,  
and he brought the wicked hooked claw positioned halfway down his wing into  
a downward arc. Wagner released pressure on the man, backing his body away.  
The soldier, the wind still knocked out of him, did not move. Wagner's body  
no longer shielded his prey from the wing claw which came down like a scythe  
and ripped his throat out.

The corporal was charging him. Wagner simply spun around and cuffed  
the man hard on the side of the head, driving the corporal's skull around  
considerably farther than it was intended to go. His neck broke with a  
sharp crack.

On the ground, a man with a gunshot wound in his leg was moaning.  
This soldier was likely to survive. Likely to tell. The Nazis would be  
unable to make sense of his report; unfortunately, the Illuminati would.  
That would mean Wagner's death.

~My life or his.~ The gargoyle answered it as he'd answered that  
question every time before. He took a knife off the body of a nearby  
commando and slit the wounded man's throat.

The others were either dead or close to it. He watched them  
impassively until he was certain that all fifteen were dead. Only then did  
he turn to face the Jews.

*

Josef tore his eyes away from the bloody meat that had once been men  
in uniform. Before him, the German officer who had saved their lives stood  
in the midst of death, still as a statue, face showing no emotion. The  
knife hung from his left hand like a limb on a willow, and while it dangled  
non-threateningly, it seemed to be part of the creature himself. Behind  
him, a pair of mighty and terrible wings spread to the sky. Josef's eyes  
took it all in, not comprehending half of what he saw, knowing only that the  
being in front of him had come from nowhere and slaughtered the  
stormtroopers without mercy. His mouth worked a few times before he could  
articulate the words. "What are you?"

Wagner looked down at the boy and realized that some form of answer  
was required. Explaining the truth would not suffice; he would never  
understand, and anyway, it would take too long. Already Wagner knew he  
would be sleeping in the woods during the coming day, and he wanted his  
stone form to remain undisturbed. ~For all the boy has been through, he  
deserves a response. One he can understand.~ Wagner studied the Star of  
David on the boy's shirt and came up with a summation.

"I'm the avenging angel," the dark figure replied, staring into  
Josef's eyes. It turned slowly, its wings folding behind its back, and  
stalked away over the killing ground.

There was no reply to that, could never be. The boy's uncle was  
still staring, dumbfounded, at the place where the apparition had vanished  
when Josef ducked his head and started to weep into his uncle's coat.


	4. Chapter 4

AUGUST 1992

_And with any luck oblivion should discover a ritual. _

~Or rediscover.~ Having remembered, Richard S. Wagner wanted  
nothing more than to forget again.

He blinked his eyes a few times and skipped ahead to a later segment  
of the poem. He was more than likely reading them out of context, but he  
didn't particularly care; they provided a small comfort.

_But come. Grief must have its term? Guilt too, then.  
And it seems there is no limit to the resourcefulness of  
recollection.  
So that a man might say and think:  
When the world was at its darkest,  
When the black wings passed over the rooftops  
(And who can divine His purposes?) even then  
There was always, always a fire in this hearth. _

~Yes. Guilt has had its term. And there was always some decency in  
my heart.~

It was then that Wagner heard the footsteps in the museum's entrance  
hall.

*

Holocaust memorial. What a ridiculous idea.

They called themselves the NLR: Nazi Low Riders. They were a gang  
of hardened young animals, many of them born to ordinary suburban families,  
many of them often left wandering the streets in their young teenage years  
while their parents were on the long commute home or while their single  
mothers were working or while their harried babysitter attempted to care for  
younger children and didn't notice them amble off. Looking for a substitute  
family, they were easily influenced by those with the authority of adults  
and the rebelliousness of teenagers all in one package. More often than  
not, that package also included a good deal of hate.

There were six Low Riders outside the War Museum tonight, each of  
them carrying a flashlight. After a particularly inspiring reading from  
"Mein Kampf," Frank Foster, the group's scholar, had been reading the paper  
when he had noticed an article describing the new exhibit at the War Museum,  
the Holocaust Memorial. Foster liked the War Museum. It was full of neat  
weapons and, of course, exhibits to the glorious pageantry of the Nazis.  
Monuments to the movement's finest hour. A Holocaust Gallery--well, that  
would just ruin the whole thing, now wouldn't it? Besides, victims were not  
the stuff of exhibition. That was to be reserved for victors.

Foster's complaints had quickly been picked up by tall, muscular,  
twenty-three-year-old Buck "Blade" Stroop, who took great pride in his  
German heritage and decided that the War Museum needed to be encouraged to  
clean up its act. George Webley was the first to volunteer. Frank  
suspected that Webley didn't care too much about the cause of National  
Socialism; he was just in the NLR so he could fight people and trash things.

Blade's volunteering to lead this evening's "mission" was enough to  
encourage Kurt McKenna to ask to come along. That, of course, had started  
Kurt's younger brother Ty pestering for the same privilege. Ty was only  
twelve, and George was laughing at the kid's audacity when Blade had said  
yes. Blade had explained that they needed someone small, fast and  
inconspicuous-looking to act as lookout while the rest of them went into the  
museum and trashed the Holocaust Gallery. And so, Ty was along this night.  
Sixteen-year-old Kurt McKenna hoped the little brat didn't do something to  
make Blade mad. He idolized Buck Stroop, the only father figure he'd ever  
had.

"So how's this gonna work?" Monica Smith asked. Monica, the sixth  
member of the group, was Buck's girlfriend. She was reasonably pretty and  
as tough as any other Low Rider's girl--she had knifed a black kid in the  
back after he got in a fight with Buck--but toughness was not what had  
earned her a place on tonight's mission. It was a general rule in the NLR  
that guys did the dirty work. However, the NLR leaders were smart enough to  
recognize that no guy in the group could crack a lock or disable a circuit  
as quickly as Monica Smith, who'd grown up next to her father in his machine  
shop after her mother had passed away.

"Ty stands watch outside. Monica cuts the electricity, and that's  
when I smash the front door and we go in. The new gallery gets trashed, but  
we leave everything else alone. Got it? Everything else in there is good  
stuff," Buck said with a grin. "Now, what have you all got?"

Smith withdrew a switchblade from her pocket, then opened the  
toolbox she carried to display the wire-cutters prominently on top. "For  
the service of the New Reich," whispered Frank Foster dramatically as he  
showed the group a short hatchet and a can of spray-paint. "I think we  
should leave a little message for the cops explaining why we were here,"  
Frank suggested, handing the can to Ty McKenna. "Swastikas. Die Jews.  
Stuff like that."

"Good thinking," Buck agreed, as Webley produced a wicked-looking  
hunting knife with a serrated edge and gave a sharklike grin. George also  
brandished a length of steel pipe in his left hand.

The best thing Kurt could get his hands on was a crowbar, which he'd  
swiped from his grandparents' garage. Kurt felt vindicated when Blade  
nodded in approval. "Nice work, kid."

Ty showed Buck a tin whistle and the little Swiss army knife he'd  
gotten for his birthday, and Webley snorted with laughter. Buck, however,  
nodded to Ty as well. This was part of the ritual.

Now it was Buck's turn. He drew a length of chain out of his  
pocket, placed the pipe in his hand beside it, and reached dramatically into  
his waistband. From it he withdrew a Beretta handgun, which he showed to  
the others.

"Wow," Kurt said, staring at the gun. Its metal seemed to shine  
with a dark aura. Then a more disturbing thought crossed his mind. "You're  
not actually gonna....use that, are you?"

"That depends on if our guard thinks he's some kind of fucking  
hero," Buck replied tersely, slipping the gun back in his waistband. "If  
he's smart about it, I won't."

"Security guards are pussies," laughed Webley.

Foster put his hand on Kurt's shoulder in a patronizing way. "Don't  
worry about it, kid. Legally, guards aren't allowed to even carry guns, and  
this one's probably some fat old grandfather who knows better than to mess  
with the Low Riders." Kurt hoped he was right. Impressing Buck was one  
thing, fights were one thing, but to actually watch someone die?

Blade looked down at Ty. "Remember, you gotta keep your eyes open.  
Blow that whistle if you see cops or anyone else sneaking around."

"I won't let you down," Ty promised, then trotted over to the front  
of the building where he crouched down beside a bush.

"Monica, babe?" Blade asked.

"The lights go off, but someone's home," Smith replied with a smile,  
opening the toolbox.

"Good. The rest of us go in around the back."

Kurt tagged after Webley, imagining how impressed the other NLRs  
were going to be when they heard about tonight's event. It was wickedly  
exciting, skulking around in the dark with these older members, wearing a  
black T-shirt and baggy pants with the black, white and grey patches of  
urban cammo gear. Kurt would never admit that he'd gotten the pants at a  
skateboarding store at the mall rather than from army surplus, where Blade  
and George got their gear. Foster wore a rather average looking pair of  
jeans and a red plaid shirt, but pinned to the shirt's lapel was a tiny Nazi  
party pin that dated back to the thirties. Kurt felt a thrill of  
anticipation run through him.

*

The other NLRs had just gone around the back of the building when a  
1994 Chevrolet Cavalier pulled into the parking lot. Beside the bush, Ty  
McKenna held his breath, wondering whether the mission was going to be  
stopped before it had even started. The car door opened, and out stepped a  
pretty brunette woman in her mid-twenties.

Ty McKenna watched as the woman locked her automobile, took a key  
out of her purse, and entered the museum. He waited for the door to close  
before he darted forward to read the identification sticker on the  
windshield of the car. SARA BERNSTEIN, RESEARCH DEPARTMENT. ~Uh-oh,~ Ty thought, ~Buck is not gonna like this. What'll we do? Better tell Buck.~  
He ran off towards the rear of the building.

The first person he came across was Monica Smith, who was just about  
to cut the power lines. "Monica, wait!" the boy cried as he dashed by.  
Smith followed after him, confused, and arrived just in time to hear Ty  
telling Buck, "We got a problem. There's someone around the front."

"Whaddya mean, someone?" George Webley snarled, turning his  
attention away from the nearby window.

"Lady researcher. Sara Bernstein, her ID said."

"A fucking Jew," Foster cursed.

Blade chuckled coldly. "I don't think we're gonna have any problem  
keepin' a Jewish bitch in line." He smacked the pipe into his hand. "Babe.  
Let them get inside before you cut the power. Give 'em five minutes."

"We're going in anyways?" Kurt asked.

"You bet, kid. We ain't passin' this up.'

*

The moment he'd heard the footsteps, Wagner had whipped his head  
around and frozen, his muscles tensed for flight, his eyes fixed on the  
doorway. The next sounds that met his ears told him that he had several  
moments before the newcomer would enter this hall. Had someone appeared in  
the doorway, that person would have seen the night security guard dressed in  
black jackboots and an immaculately pressed, vintage 1940's, black Nazi  
uniform, with the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords hanging around  
his neck, the ribbon of the Iron Cross through his buttonhole, the pin of  
the Luftwaffe on his tunic pocket, various other assorted medals, major's  
rank, and what seemed to be a long leathery cape hanging from the golden  
clips on his epaulettes.

~Probably museum staff.~ He tried to think of who might be around  
after hours, and suddenly became acutely conscious of what he was wearing.  
~I can't let them see me like this.~ The dark wings flared, and he jumped  
into the sky, his pinions beating downwards as he flew into the rafters.

He perched on a beam and let another bound give him altitude to  
glide into a corner. Dropping into a crouch, he wheeled around so he could  
look down and survey the room. ~One good thing about being re-carved. I  
lost enough body mass so these wings can actually make me fly.~ It was a  
trick no other gargoyle could duplicate.

"Rick?" A woman's voice called down the corridor.

~Gott verdamnt!~ Sara Bernstein. Museum employee, pretty girl,  
working towards a Master's degree in History, specialty: Jewish History.  
She often worked on exhibits at nighttime, and that was how he'd come to get  
to know her. He didn't get much company on the night shift, and her  
companionship especially welcome. He considered her to be one of the few  
friends he had in this city. ~Of all the people to catch me in this  
uniform...~ He couldn't let her see him, and that was final.

"Rick! Are you here?" She peered though the doorway at the other  
end of the hall.

"I suppose he's not around," Sara said to herself, since the museum  
was empty and there was no one to hear. She was a little disappointed. Her  
eyes fixed on the floor as she walked down the hall to the Holocaust  
Gallery. Richard Wagner was a handsome and personable man, always willing  
to share a coffee with her, if a little close-mouthed about his personal  
life. She'd actually tried to ask him out a few times, only to be gently  
and politely turned down. Often she wondered how a man who was so friendly  
and attentive at work could keep the rest of his life a complete enigma.

~It's odd,~ Sara thought, ~that there isn't anyone at all on guard  
duty.~

Abruptly, the lights went out.

*

"Done!" The four NLRs could hear Monica's voice calling from around  
the side of the building.

"Great," Buck Stroop grinned. "George?"

"My pleasure," Webley said, as he shattered the window with his  
pipe.

*

The instant the museum plunged into blackness, Wagner stiffened and  
scanned first the rafters, and then the floor below. His gargoyle eyes  
glowed softly, piercing the night. Below, Sara Bernstein was groping for a  
wall she could use to get her bearings.

Power shortage. He took to the air again, dodging beams, until he  
was above the entrance hall. Here he folded his wings and dropped down to  
the floor. The power was out throughout the building. Wagner sprinted to  
the power box and threw the switch for the generator. The emergency lights  
whirred to life throughout the museum, casting dim and multiple shadows  
amongst the exhibits. The gargoyle's blue eyes scanned the rows of fuses,  
but could discern nothing wrong.

A look out the front doors told him that the buildings across the  
street still had power. That was when the old feeling of danger set in.  
Instantly suspicious, Wagner decided to test his theory.

He was out the front door in a few long strides. There, at the  
front of the building, was a kid, about twelve years old, painting a  
swastika on the wall. At the sound of the door opening, Ty McKenna dropped  
the spray can and reached into his jeans pocket to blow his whistle.

~Better look, just to make sure it's not one of the NLR. Wouldn't  
Blade love it if I blew the whistle on him.~ Ty turned his head to see if  
one of the gang members had emerged from the front entrance.

At first, Ty wasn't sure. For a moment, he wondered if Frank Foster  
had pinched one of the WWII Nazi uniforms and put it on. Frank, however,  
was skinny with sandy hair, glasses and freckles. The man on the porch was  
none of those things, and the ice-blue eyes that locked on Ty seemed to burn  
with an inner fire. Ty reached for the whistle.

~Kid.~ Wagner's face remained impassive but his emotion was that  
which matched an evil grin. ~Scare.~ Wagner bared his teeth, giving the  
kid a good view of his fangs, and growled low in his throat. Three steps  
had him directly in front of the little punk, his wings billowing behind him  
just like a cape, and Wagner let his eyes light up a little as he snarled,  
"Get away from my museum."

Ty gripped the whistle in one sweaty palm, but he found that he did  
not have the air in his lungs to blow it. Whatever this man in front of him  
was, he wasn't a cop or a guard. His eyes were glowing in a terrifyingly  
freaky way, and the growl in his throat was more frightening in its quiet  
control than any roaring beast in a horror movie. And this was no movie.  
The man's hand grabbed Ty's shirt collar and lifted him right off his feet  
in one effortless move. Ty got a good look at the long white incisor teeth  
which gleamed in the light, just a little yellowed, not the least bit  
fake-looking.

"Go," the man said, and dropped Ty. Then, from out of his right  
pocket, the man drew a silver handgun. "Go!"

Ty couldn't even scream. He gulped and ran as fast as he could down  
the street.

~Verdamnt kind,~ Wagner thought, returning the gun to his pocket,  
and then a disturbing thought struck his mind. ~He couldn't have knocked  
out the power all by himself. No tools. Just a kid. That whistle...  
There's more.~

From the back of the building, there came a crash.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter the Fifth**

George Webley was never happier then when he was breaking things,  
unless, of course, he was blowing things up. He used the pipe to brush away  
some of the shards of glass from the window ledge, and allowed Blade to  
climb inside first. Smith had evidently done her job, because there were no  
alarms. Kurt McKenna held his flashlight in the window so Stroop could see.  
When Stroop was in and had his large Enforcer light switched on, Webley  
picked up Kurt from behind and lifted him in. Foster followed, and Webley  
was the last one in, glass crunching underneath his jungle combat boots.  
Kurt hoped the glass wouldn't slice through the soles of his Nikes.

"Are we waiting for Monica?" Kurt whispered.

"No," Buck Stroop replied. "She'll make her own way here."

"Then let's get the party started," George smirked, sweeping his  
flashlight over medieval lances and swords, looking for the Holocaust  
Gallery.

*

Wagner spread his wings and sprinted forward a few steps until he  
had speed enough to propel him into the sky. He took only a few moments  
climbing for altitude. He soared over the building like a hunting eagle,  
his eyes scanning all four sides. There! At the back of the museum, a  
young girl in a black fake-leather jacket was climbing in a broken window.  
Wagner frowned--the air should have been split by the scream of alarms.  
Evidently the toolbox in the girl's right hand had contained the necessary  
equipment to take care of that.

It did not contain the equipment to deal with an angry gargoyle, and  
even if it had, the last thing Monica Smith was expecting was a threat  
diving out of the sky behind her. She had just set the toolbox down to ease  
her left leg over the broken glass in the pane when powerful hands seized  
her from behind. The next thing she knew, she was watching the wall of the  
museum zip by in front of her face. She fought to turn around and see what  
was happening, but could not.

The wall abruptly vanished from before her eyes, and as she looked  
down, she could see open concrete sinking away beneath her--was that the  
_roof_? Suddenly, her upward flight halted and he fell. The hands released  
her on the way down and she landed with a thump on the roof six feet below.

With the wind knocked out of her, Monica tried once more to turn  
around. The maneuver was accomplished for her by a rough hand which picked  
her up by the front of her jacket. The hand's owner took a few steps  
forward, and Smith found herself dangling off the edge of the roof. She  
tore her eyes away from the ground two stories below to focus on her captor.  
He was even more terrifying than the height.

The man was dressed all in black. ~The security guard from the  
secret police,~ she thought irrationally, and then her breath caught in her  
throat as her airway closed up halfway and refused to re-open. Her captor's  
eyes were glowing like phosphorus, and in their depths they were a cold, icy  
blue, more alien than anything she'd seen on a bad trip. Smith realized  
that the man was holding her effortlessly off the ground with one hand, and  
should her captor slacken his grip, she would plummet to her death. She  
couldn't decide whether it would be more frightening to fall, or be brought  
onto the roof with this creature that held her.

Monica finally managed to find his voice. "Buck? Buck! George!  
Frank!"

~More?~ Wagner thought. ~Dammit, there's more! Why didn't I think  
of that?~ What he said, though, involved lifting his prisoner right up to  
his face until their noses touched. "How many of you are there?" Wagner  
hissed.

"Six," Monica croaked. "Don't kill me. Please."

~If she's one of the six, there's five more left. Four, if the kid  
was part of their gang too. That means there's four or five inside there  
and...Sara! Scheiss!~ His eyes flashed, and their sudden luminescence  
drowned the blue centers out completely.

Monica Smith never saw the blow coming, and never felt the impact as  
the black-uniformed stranger tossed her several meters across the roof.  
Fortunately for her, Wagner had not used his full strength. In the days to  
come, she'd curse the whiplash in her neck, never knowing the gargoyle could  
have snapped it easily if he'd wanted to. For the meantime, though, she lay  
unconscious. When she finally came to, she would wonder how the hell she  
had ended up on the roof.

*

Sara Bernstein heard the approaching footsteps and nervously stepped  
a pace backwards. "Rick? Is that you?" she asked tentatively.

"Don't move, lady." They came around the corner at the far end of  
the hall, near the Holocaust exhibit.

There were four of them. The leader wore a black T-shirt which  
showed off his tattoos, a pair of olive drab army pants, and knee-high  
combat boots. He brandished a steel pipe, and Sara could see that the  
tattoo on his left bicep was an Iron Cross. She knew right away that the  
situation was potentially deadly. On the leader's left was another young  
thug, his hair shaved off just like his leader's, and dressed completely in  
camouflage fatigues. He grinned and drew a wicked hunting knife. To his  
right stood a boy of perhaps twenty in a plaid shirt with a hatchet.

Following behind came a teenager in black T-shirt and urban cammo pants,  
toting a crowbar. This one was a bit more hesitant and stared at Sara,  
wondering what the other gang members were going to do.

"We don't need no dirty Jews here," George Webley stated. ~Frank  
Foster coulda said it better. Explained why they stink and all that. But I  
can say it faster.~ "Fuck all Jews." ~There. That oughtta do it. Now, to  
trash stuff!~ His pipe smashed an exhibit case with a diary displayed  
underneath. Sara gasped.

"The police will be here shortly," Sara said tersely, hoping the  
skinheads would fall for her bluff.

They didn't. Blade Stroop smiled coldly. "No, they won't. The  
alarms and phone lines are cut." He turned to the others. "Kurt! Frank!  
George! Take out the trash. I'll keep an eye on our....guest."

High above them, right under the rafters, black wings passed over.

*

Kurt steeled himself. He was still working his mind past the  
societal taboo of even touching these things, let alone destroying them. He  
focused on a display case of Jewish passports and badges, swung the crowbar  
back and forth a little like a baseball player warming up, and let fly. The  
case cracked with a loud complaint. One more swing shattered it completely,  
knocking the artifacts out onto the floor. ~This is easier than I thought.~  
Across the room, Webley was dragging his hunting knife down the life-size  
photo of the gate to Auschwitz.

Meanwhile, Frank Foster had damaged the Holocaust exhibits in his  
line of travel and emerged to see a magnificent diorama. There was a  
genuine Mercedes staff car in front of him, its chrome shining brilliantly  
and its body polished to a high gloss. On either side, mannequins held  
banners and flags adorned with swastikas. Beside the car stood a  
magnificent replica of a SS officer, replete with full dress uniform,  
standing proudly at attention with his head held high and looking as if he  
breathed.

Frank paused a moment and took a few steps forward, staring in  
wonder. The display was wonderfully impressive. His eyes scanned the  
placard below--THE NUREMBERG RALLIES, it said, complete with photographs and  
several paragraphs of information. Frank wished he could have been part of  
it. Truly, he'd been born fifty years too late.

Foster looked up again to see the SS officer looking directly down  
at him. The statue blinked.

He didn't even have time to scream before the "mannequin" jumped  
over the velvet ropes in one fluid movement. Its left hand seized him by  
the throat, giving him barely enough air to breathe. The hatchet fell out  
of his hand in the shock of the moment. The man's eyes glowed with an  
unearthly light, and they were focused on the Nazi party pin on Frank's  
collar. They darted to gaze into his own, and the lips split in a cold  
smile. "You think you're a Nazi, kid?" his captor asked. The man's right  
hand quickly felt Foster's pockets, waistband, and anywhere else he might be  
concealing a weapon.

Wagner glared at the young man in his left hand and couldn't decide  
whether to feel loathing or pity. ~The war's been lost for over fifty years  
and this kid wants to be a Nazi? Well...perhaps I can change his mind.~  
Wagner pulled out his Walther and let the barrel of the gun trace a line  
across the guy's face. "Do you have any idea what Nazis do to people they  
don't like? Perhaps I can show you. How would you like that, hmmm?" He  
deliberately let his old German accent creep back into his voice, thickening  
with each word.

"Noooo," Frank Foster moaned, shutting his eyes and praying that the  
nightmare would go away.

Wagner growled and tossed the skinhead back against a wall like a  
rag doll. As he lay there groaning, only semi-conscious, Wagner's gun  
raised as if under its own volition. The gargoyle's first impulse was to  
shoot the guy twice in the heart. Twice, in case your first shot missed.  
It was a common technique among those who killed on a regular basis.  
Leaving this young man here, inside the museum, was much more of a risk than  
leaving the girl on the roof, where she was likely to be stuck and certain  
to be farther removed from Sara. Wagner hadn't lived a hundred and six  
years by taking chances, or taking prisoners.

But this time Wagner wasn't at war. He wasn't on an assassination  
assignment, either. This time, there would be a reckoning. Technically, he  
reminded himself, he wasn't even supposed to be carrying a gun, and he would  
have to make an account of this incident the next evening. It would be  
difficult to dispose of bodies and clean up evidence under these  
circumstances, and then there was Sara to consider--he doubted she'd keep  
something like that a secret. She had too much of a conscience.  
Furthermore, he could not afford to take his time making a decision. A  
quick once-over caused him to conclude that the wannabe Nazi wasn't going  
anywhere any time soon. Wagner moved off, picking up Frank's hatchet on the  
way.

*

Kurt moved around the corner. He looked over a wall full of plaques  
bearing victims' testimony before he started to knock the plaques off the  
wall. He read the odd phrase, but the words did not begin to sink into his  
mind. He struck randomly, attacking some displays and leaving others stand.  
The sporadic nature of his assaults caused him to travel forward quickly,  
and soon a soft groaning attracted his attention.

Frank Foster lay on his side against the wall, moaning and moving  
his upper arm very slightly. Kurt swallowed hard and ran over to him.  
"Frank? Frank, are you okay? What happened?"

"God....a monster, a monster," Foster moaned, and faded into  
unconsciousness.

"Frank? Frank!" Kurt shook him, but Frank wasn't responding.

More terrified than he'd ever been in his life, even including the  
time when big Jack Richardson had beat him up, Kurt checked to make sure  
Foster was still breathing. He was, but an ugly bruise had started to form  
on the side of his head. His lower arm looked as if it might be broken,  
too. Kurt didn't know what he could do with an unconscious person. But  
Buck would. Buck could fix anything.

"Buck!" Kurt McKenna ran back to the opening of the Holocaust  
Gallery.

*

That was one down. Three more to go.

He worried about Sara. His instincts were telling him that if the  
gunman had wanted to shoot her, he'd have done it right away. Furthermore,  
even considering his gargoyle nature, it was only one of him and four of  
them, and he had no idea what weapons they might be carrying. Unsuspecting  
of danger, the skinheads didn't know enough to stay together and that would  
make it easy for him to pick them off one by one. After he took care of the  
men, then he could go after the leader.

He'd certainly taken the last one by surprise. He'd held his  
breath, trying to look like a statue, intending to jump the boy from several  
meters away. It had been a lucky break, actually, that the plaid-shirted  
hatchet carrier had been so enthralled by Nazi history that he'd walked  
right up to the display. Disturbing, but lucky for Wagner.

~But luck must not be trusted.~ He thought once more of Sara and  
felt guilty for not going to her immediately, poor strategy or not. If he  
heard a scream, he'd be across the hall to her in moments. ~If that gunman  
does anything to her...~

~...reckoning be damned.~

*

~Smash. Crash. Trash. Thrash.~ George Webley found this little  
ditty to be very poetic. He'd shredded the life-size photo and had just  
bashed a mannequin's head off. Foster would have wanted him to leave the  
one in German uniform alone--respect for the Reich and all that--but it was  
so much more fun to drive the hunting knife into its chest. He struggled to  
pull it out and realized that a real human body didn't have nearly so much  
resistance, unless, of course, you accidentally drove your knife in too high  
and got it stuck in the rib cage. Human ribs were incredibly strong and  
could actually break knife blades.

Kurt McKenna came tearing around the corner, the soles of his shoes  
skidding on the varnished floor. "George!"

"What?" Webley growled. He didn't much like kids. They couldn't  
fight for crap, and this one was not just distracting him--he was being  
annoying as well.

"Something got Foster!"

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Frank's unconscious over there–" the older McKenna pointed  
backwards "--and I dunno if he's even breathing and..."

"Shit." Now George would have to go look.

"Where's Ty?" Suddenly, all Kurt wanted was his little brother,  
safe and sound beside him. "What if it got Ty?"

"If you won't fuck off, then fuckin' hurry up and show me," George  
snapped, wanting to get this over with as soon as possible.

*

Buck Stroop grinned coldly. The Jewish bitch was obviously upset,  
watching his Low Riders smash her damned Jew exhibit. Good. Lies, most of  
it. Fucking Jews, trying to take over everything, drive out the whites, and  
then making it like white people were to blame. Where else could the  
niggers and packis and spics have gotten the idea from? Well, he would make  
her watch the destruction. After that, well...there were several  
interesting possibilities.

He tried to decide whether or not to kill her. He'd been to jail  
for two years already, weapons offenses, and had no desire to go back. On  
the other hand, the museum was deserted--no witnesses--and he didn't know  
her personally. Random acts of violence made it so much harder to pinpoint  
a perpetrator.

Sara Bernstein was frozen in terror, not daring to move lest she  
provoke the gunman, but in her mind she sent a prayer to God heavenward,  
praying for her safety. As she ended the prayer, an ugly thought crossed  
her mind. Her resulting anger and fear overcame her better judgement.

"What did you do to Rick?" she demanded.

Stroop looked away from the damage the others had caused and glared  
at Sara. "Who the fuck is Rick?" he asked.

~If he doesn't know, then he hasn't seen him,~ she thought.  
~Maybe...~ She didn't answer the skinhead's question.

Blade swaggered closer and brandished the gun. "I said, who the  
fuck is Rick?" He enunciated the words in a mockingly exaggerated way.

"A coworker," she whispered.

"And he's supposed to be here tonight?"

"He...he said he might be dropping by. Maybe."

Buck stroked his jaw, assimilating this new information.

*

"Jesus God," George whispered, staring at the unconscious form of  
Frank Foster. "This is some serious shit." Kurt was staring up at him,  
expecting him to magically know what to do.

Inside, Webley's mind was racing. ~Security guards don't do this.  
I've tangled with guards before and they don't do this shit.~

George's cry was much like Kurt's. "BUCK!!!!"

*

Wagner had been stalking the teenager. He had seemed hesitant,  
uncertain, a "softer" target, and so the gargoyle had decided to eliminate  
him before going after the maniac with the hunting knife. Unfortunately, he  
hadn't had time to make his move before Kurt and George had doubled up.

He'd have trouble pinning two guys with his Walther. A handgun  
really couldn't cover two targets, and the skinheads would know that. In  
this museum, though, there were other weapons which could.

He dropped out of the rafters in the World War Two exhibit area. He  
told himself he was selecting a German weapon because the German display was  
the closest to the Holocaust Gallery, and not because he felt an inner  
attraction to Nazi equipment. Whatever the reason, the gargoyle formed his  
wing hands into fists and drove them hard against the glass of a display  
case. The golden gauntlets protected him from the shards, which he swept  
out of his way in order to remove the machine gun inside.

*

Stroop was considering having Foster standing at the front entrance  
with the hatchet, ready to give this "Rick" a surprise welcome should he  
arrive, when a shout rang through the hall. "BUCK!!"

Blade turned in annoyance to see George Webley running towards him,  
followed by a deathly pale Kurt McKenna. "What?"

"Buck, Frank's unconscious back there," George reported.

"I want Ty," Kurt whimpered. "And where's Monica?"

~Monica. She should have been here by now,~ Blade realized. He'd  
forgotten all about his girlfriend in the excitement of holding the Jewess  
at gunpoint. He turned to Sara, just to make sure she wasn't going to try  
to run, and instantly interpreted the sudden look of hope that crossed her  
face.

~She'd mentioned someone named Rick. We haven't met a security  
guard.~ Whether the person responsible for Frank's beating was Rick, the  
guard, or someone else, Buck had a plan to deal with it. He seized Sara's  
shoulder and held the gun to her temple. She drew a shuddering breath as  
Blade called out, "Okay, mister, whoever you are, you have ten seconds to  
show yourself before I blow her brains out."


	6. Chapter 6

**Black Wings Passed Over**

Chapter the Sixth

So much for hunting down the teen and the maniac. Wagner had to  
regretted having been reckless enough to wear it. He was heading into a  
hostage situation, the odds were against him, and there was no way he could  
get Sara to trust him now...

Stroop looked around the hall, his eyes wild. "You'd better come  
out now before I shoot her!"

The reply was quiet and came from somewhere behind the group. "What  
makes you think I care?"

Kurt and George wheeled around. Buck's eyes searched the shadows  
and picked out a slow, deliberate movement back in the Holocaust Gallery.  
The man made no sudden moves. He advanced step by measured step, and the  
figure that came into the dim emergency lights was somehow darker than the  
shadows which gave him birth. The man was dressed in a beautiful black SS  
uniform--a major, Buck could tell by the badges--and the medal around his  
throat had been polished until the silver around the outside of the cross  
gleamed. It was a Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords, and it looked  
real. The whole uniform looked real. The face, however, looked like  
something from a nightmare. The eyes glowed with a light which, Kurt was  
convinced, did not belong anywhere outside of hell.

The black-uniformed figure leaned casually against the shredded  
photo of Auschwitz's gate. "Just do it outside. I don't need blood and  
brains on my clean floor."

To Sara, the entire experience became unreal. It was hard enough to  
believe that she was under attack by thugs in the same museum where she'd  
worked since first year university and had always felt perfectly safe  
before. When she saw Rick's face in a stormtrooper uniform, the whole thing  
took on a bizarre surreality that surely could not exist anywhere but in a  
dream. It was a nightmare. It had to be.

Buck twisted her shoulder cruelly, ramming the barrel of the gun at  
an upward angle into her skin. She could feel the coldness of the trigger  
guard on her cheek, and it snapped her back to reality. Good Mr. Wagner in  
that uniform... "Rick?" she whispered.

"Rick," Buck repeated mockingly. "I'll kill her, you know."

There went Wagner's "I-don't-care" angle. He had others.

The gargoyle smiled coldly and, in a flash, dropped to a kneeling  
position. For the first time, the skinheads noticed that the item he had  
been holding behind him was a vintage 1940's machine gun. German issue,  
Blade noted, just what would have been given to a SS soldier... The Nazi  
officer's voice was cold and still quiet. "I can kill you all." He held  
the gun in his left hand, sweeping it back and forth, covering first George,  
then Buck and Sara, then Kurt, back to Stroop and his prisoner.

"This is insane," Webley whispered as "Rick's" eyes began to shine  
brighter and his lips split in a snarl, displaying a set of long, sharp  
incisors. Sara closed her eyes, praying madly for deliverance. Kurt's gaze  
fixed on the gargoyle's face. Wagner's eyes quickly flickered to the other  
two skinheads. George still gripped his hunting knife, but he knew enough  
not to take on a man with a firearm. The boy was staring in an almost  
comical manner, his crowbar completely forgotten. For now, the dangerous  
one was their leader.

"I'll do it!" Stroop threatened, pointing the Beretta's barrel at a  
ninety degree angle to Sara's temple. His eyes focused on the machine gun,  
waiting for its barrel to drop. ~Whatever costume this guy is wearing, he  
won't have me hurt the girl. I hope. What choice have I got? C'mon, pal,  
drop the gun...~ He was satisfied to see the machine gun waver, then sag.

Kurt McKenna saw the light in Wagner's eyes instantly extinguish,  
and seconds later a shot rang out, followed almost immediately by another.

*-*

Buck "Blade" Stroop wasn't certain exactly what had happened, but  
whatever it was, it was enough to provoke him to pull the Beretta's trigger.  
His shot went wide, passing behind Sara Goldstein. His first thought was,  
~How the hell could I have missed?~ His second was to notice intense pain  
in his right arm. His third was to realize that the limb was spurting blood  
from a wound which had suddenly appeared. Stroop cried out and dropped the  
Beretta, raising his left hand to the wound in an attempt to stifle the  
bleeding.

Of all the people there, only Kurt McKenna was looking at the  
shining silver Walther in Richard S. Wagner's right hand. The machine gun  
lay uselessly on the floor, and useless indeed it was. A museum piece, its  
firing pin had been removed, even if Wagner had been able to find live  
ammunition for it. The same could not be said for Wagner's Walther, which  
was loaded and in perfect working condition--as Stroop's injury proved.

Later, Wagner would think about the gamble he'd just taken. He knew  
he wouldn't hit Sara--he was a better shot than that--but he'd had no  
guarantee that the skinhead leader would not. He would chase the thought  
from his head with the aid of a large bottle of Bushmill's Irish Whiskey and  
the knowledge that he hadn't had many options. Now, however, the delicate  
part was over. The NLR were his meat.

Three steps and a long jump, aided by his wings, placed him right in  
front of the injured Buck "Blade" Stroop. Wagner was perfectly positioned  
to deliver a strong punch to the NLR leader's jaw, sending him staggering  
backwards away from Sara and giving him something to think about in addition  
to the bullet hole in his arm.

"Rick?" Bernstein's tone of voice conveyed her shock and confusion.  
"Get clear," he ordered, turning to face Webley and McKenna. Once  
again, his eyes lit up. He carefully positioned himself between Sara and  
the two remaining skinheads.

George Webley seriously considered surrender for the first time in  
his life. He was fighting against a superior opponent who was armed with a  
gun, and for Christ's sake, George didn't even know what this guy was. That  
fact, however, was what made Webley decide to fight. He'd seen the number  
the black-uniformed man had done on Foster and Stroop. He didn't want to  
think about what Monica and Ty McKenna might look like right now. George  
raised his knife and rushed the man the Jewess had called Rick.

Wagner's left hand gripped George's right and held it immobile.  
George struggled and realized, to his horror, that his opponent had strength  
far beyond a human's. Webley's left arm was pinned not by a human hand, but  
by some other kind of evil little limb which sported a golden metal glove.  
The metal was cold against his skin. George felt a jerk as the hand on a  
similar limb closed right around the blade of his hunting knife and started  
to tug it out of his grip. "Kurt, help me!" George hollered as his survival  
urge overrode his pride.

Kurt froze, gripping the crowbar in his clammy hands. He was more  
frightened then he'd ever been in his life, and yet, he couldn't run away.  
Not if he ever wanted to get in good with the Nazi Low Riders. That was  
George Webley, one of the toughest guys he knew, and Webley needed _his_  
help. Kurt McKenna's help. With his mom gone all day at work and too tired  
to pay much attention to him once she was home, the NLR were like his  
family. They'd taken him in. He wouldn't let them down.

Kurt raised the crowbar and flung it at "Mr. Rick's" leathery back.  
Wagner felt the impact and reflexively released Webley's left hand to unfurl  
his right wing and strike back at Kurt, shrugging him away. Wagner's  
concern was with the knife-wielding skinhead; the kid could wait.

George lost no time in using the momentary distraction to his  
advantage. He formed a fist and slugged Wagner in the stomach. It didn't  
do the damage it would have done to a human, but Wagner definitely felt it  
and cursed the instinct that caused him to give Webley that opening. It was  
a mistake he would not repeat.

Wagner's right hand came down to block the next blow, and a second  
later the hunting knife finally came out of the Webley's grip. Wagner  
resisted the urge to wheel around and use the large hook-shaped claw halfway  
down his wings to tear a gash in the skinhead's chest. Instead, he brought  
up his knee and caught George Webley in the groin. His hands let go,  
enabling Webley to double over in agony as Wagner clasped his hands together  
and brought them down hard on George's back.

George Webley writhed on the ground as Wagner whirled around, his  
wings swinging out behind him. The icy stare focused on Kurt McKenna.  
Almost automatically, Wagner's left wing passed the hunting knife to his  
right hand. His gargoyle nostrils could smell the fear radiating off his  
final target.

Kurt McKenna wasn't a wimp. He'd been in plenty of fights, mostly  
with black, Hispanic, Asian and Middle Eastern kids, a few times with the  
SHARPs. SHARP may have stood for "Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice," Kurt  
had once thought, but that didn't mean they had anything against fighting.  
Kurt prided himself on winning more fights than he'd lost. But fighting  
other kids was one thing; fighting a one-man stormtrooper squad that had  
just taken out the rest of the NLR was quite another. Kurt McKenna lost his  
nerve and ran.

He didn't get very far before the hand picked him up and pinned him  
against the wall. He squirmed to get free until he looked up and saw the  
cold look in the ice-blue eyes opposite his own, and George's hunting knife  
beginning its descent. Kurt McKenna squealed, shut his eyes, and wet  
himself. The knife passed cleanly through the handful of black T-shirt in  
Wagner's hand and buried itself up to the hilt in the wall behind the young  
skinhead. Wagner grinned with satisfaction and let go, allowing a ghostly  
pale Kurt McKenna to dangle from the back of his shirt a good two feet above  
the floor.

Wagner quickly surveyed the situation. Sara was watching him with  
wide eyes and gaping jaw, but she was being still and quiet, which was a  
great help to him. George Webley was curled up into a ball, gasping in  
pain. Blade Stroop knelt on the floor, trying to stifle his bleeding and  
mostly succeeding. The wound was not a deadly one. He saw Wagner's eyes on  
him and staggered to his feet.

"You bastard," Stroop rasped. The shame at being beaten stung more  
than the pain. Still bent over, he stumbled forward with murder in his  
eyes.

Wagner had had enough. The skinheads had lost. He wanted nothing  
more than to deal with Sara and get the hell out of Dodge before the police  
came walking in, asking awkward questions. He was in no mood to waste his  
time on Buck.

Wagner drew his Walther and pointed it at Stroop. "Next one's  
through your heart," he growled.

The skinhead leader was bold, or stupid, enough to snicker. "You  
wouldn't do that. The cops'd haul you in."

"Maybe," Wagner replied, "but you'd be just as dead." A fanged  
smile flashed in the dimness.

Buck's face went rather white and he paused in his advance. Wagner  
quickly examined the skinhead's surroundings and noticed one of the  
mannequins leaning heavily against a movable railing that kept people back  
from the exhibit. The corners of his lips tugged up in a smile and he fired  
again.

The first thing Buck did after he heard the gunshot was to  
double-check his body and ensure that no more holes had appeared in it. His  
relief at finding none was quickly followed by surprise and pain as the  
mannequin fell on top of him, its support having been shot out from under  
it. He pushed it away, only to look up into the face of Richard S. Wagner  
as the gargoyle's fist descended.

Wagner looked up from the now-submissive skinhead. "Get me some  
rope," he directed. Sara obeyed automatically, her movements robotlike.  
Wagner tied Stroop's hands behind his back, bound his ankles, and fastened  
his feet to his hands. He did the same to George Webley and the blubbering  
Kurt McKenna, just in case they got any smart ideas. Wagner paused, looked  
back at the bleeding Buck Stroop, and grudgingly tore a strip off George's  
combat jacket to bind around the wound in Stroop's arm. Assured that the  
skinhead wouldn't leave the contents of his veins on the museum floor,  
Wagner gave a cursory glance around at the shell-shocked Sara Goldstein, the  
helpless Nazi Low Riders, the damage they had done, then down at his own  
uniform and the Walther's handle sticking out of his pocket.

This was going to be hard as hell to explain.

He had to get out of here before the cops came. There was no way he  
could explain the night's events without giving away his true nature--not to  
mention the Nazi uniform he wore or the loaded WWII Walther he carried  
everywhere. He could always fly out a second-story window, but he didn't  
like the idea of leaving Sara alone with the NLR, helpless though they might  
be. She'd been through a terrifying experience tonight, and he genuinely  
cared about her. Perhaps more than the simple urge to protect could account  
for.

Sara was a problem for him now. When the police questioned her,  
she'd tell them who'd saved her: the security guard, Mr. Richard "Rick" S.  
Wagner. They'd track him down sooner or later if he stayed in Arizona, and  
then he'd have to face questioning on why he'd left the scene, in addition  
to coming up with an explanation for the damage he'd dealt the NLR. Yes,  
his peaceful life here was pretty much shot.

Eliminating Sara never even crossed his mind. He'd rather kill a  
hundred strangers for the Illuminati than harm the woman who'd befriended  
him. He held out his hand to her. "Come on. Let's be getting you out of  
here."

Sara looked at him, her eyes a little wide, but even through her  
shock she knew that the man she called Richard Wagner had saved her. She  
reached out, her arm shaking, and put her hand in his. He wrapped his other  
arm around her shoulders, supporting her, and led her to his car.

If she noticed that the vehicle in the parking lot was a World War  
Two German staff car, she did not react to it. ~She probably has trouble  
believing a lot of what's happened tonight,~ Wagner thought. He squeezed  
her hand, trying to make himself as non-threatening as possible, and asked  
in a gentle voice, "Do you have any family in the city?"

"You know where I live..."

"No. I don't want to leave you alone after this. Family, friends?"

"Yes." She gave him an address.

"Good. Just sit back and relax. It's all over and I'm taking you  
somewhere safe." She was still too much in shock to realize that  
ordinarily, in a situation like this, one would wait for police. Right now,  
she wanted to see family more than anything else, and this desire also  
helped her to forget.

As he pulled out of the parking lot, he picked up his cellular phone  
and punched in a number. "Hello? I'd like to report a break-in at the War  
Museum. Six skinheads. You might want to send an ambulance, too. One got  
himself shot. Don't forget the one on the roof." He clicked the END button  
despite the dispatcher's protestations.

Immediately thereafter, he dialed a second number, this time hitting  
a switch on the side of the phone that was not marked ENCRYPTION even though  
that was what it did. It was time to book his ticket out of Dodge. "This  
is Omega." He sighed regretfully. "Job offer accepted."

"Excellent," came the voice on the other end of the line.

"Just one thing. Where the hell is Hertzgina anyway?"

"Hercegovina. Bosnia-Hercegovina. It's in Yugoslavia. Take  
American Airlines flight 154 to Washington tomorrow morning. We'll have a  
car meet you there."

~Yugoslavia. Fuckin' great.~

*-*

There was silence in the car as the former Nazi officer drove Sara  
to the address she'd given him. Wagner's mind was trying to guess what the  
Illuminati might have in store for him in Bosnia. Somehow, though, he  
didn't regret his actions tonight, even though they'd gotten him back in the  
thick of Illuminati business again. He looked over at Sara several times,  
checking to make sure she was all right. He shyly peeked over at her and  
then rested his left hand on her leg. She gripped it gratefully.

The black Mercedes-Benz staff car pulled up in the driveway of a  
small, older-looking home which, while a little worn by age and weather, was  
still trim and tidy. Wagner stepped out of the car, wrapping a silk aviator  
scarf around his neck and putting his leather jacket back over the uniform  
tunic to conceal his clothing from Sara's family. He opened her door for  
her, taking her arm and leading her up the walk to the front door, where he  
knocked three times. He paused, and knocked again louder. In the upper  
left window, a light came on. Wagner knocked once more.

"Who's that at this hour?" came the voice from within, and then an  
elderly man in his seventies opened the door.

"Grandpa!" Sara dropped Wagner's arm and rushed over to the old  
man, giving him a hug, tears welling up in her eyes.

"Sara? What's happened?"

"There was a break-in at the museum," she sobbed, "six skinheads  
came in and trashed the Holocaust Gallery, and one had a gun..."

Her grandfather held her tight, and Wagner"s eyes could see the  
six-digit tattoo on his upper arm. The man's head rose to look at the  
person who'd brought his granddaughter to him, half expecting to see a  
policeman.

His face went white as chalk. Sara released him as she felt his  
whole body stiffen in her arms. He raised the tattooed arm and pointed one  
gnarled finger at Richard S. Wagner.

"Grandpa, what's wrong?" Sara asked, taking one step backwards.

"You," the old man said with a quaver in his voice, his eyes fixed  
on the dark-coated figure standing near the back of the porch.

"Grandpa, what are you talking about?"

"Auschwitz. Krakow. 1943," was the only explanation she got. It  
was also the most she'd ever heard her grandfather say about that time in  
his life. Wagner said nothing, his blue eyes gazing deeply into the man's  
brown ones.

~_And with any luck oblivion should discover a ritual_.~

"Don't you remember me?" Josef Bernstein whispered.

"No." Wagner replied coldly, turning on his heel and vanishing into  
the summer night.

*-*

Nothing more need be said, and it is better that way--

--James Fenton, "A German Requiem"

_~finis~_


End file.
